


Rain

by TheDesignatedDriver



Category: Ava's Demon
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-30 11:29:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3935173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDesignatedDriver/pseuds/TheDesignatedDriver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An accident occurs inside the heart of a downpour. Ava is forced to deal with her choices in fleeing or fighting an unraveling life, and Odin's life begins to fold into hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Accident

**Author's Note:**

> This was loosely inspired by the prompt "I hit you with my car and I was the only one to visit you in the hospital AU", but my emotional investment to these characters have taken it several steps further. This is dedicated to emissary-architect (emissary-architect.tumblr.com). I have also posted this on tumblr, and I plan to update it there as well. This WILL be multi-chapter. Feel free to comment if you enjoy!
> 
> thedesignateddriver.tumblr.com

It was raining, and Odin couldn’t see a damn thing.

Of course the _one weekend_ that Olai sent him out to handle trading in the city was the one that the sky ripped open and dropped wet hell on them. Of course it was. Olai couldn’t have chosen anyone else, or any other weekend, or just have gone himself, could he? Intellectually, he knew it wasn’t really his brother’s fault for this mess, but blaming the heavens for this cumulonimbus bullshit wasn’t as satisfying.

The clock on the dashboard read 9:02.  At this rate, he wouldn’t be out of the city and back home until midnight, and driving in solid darkness and thunderstorm was only worsening Odin’s mood. At least there wasn’t much traffic.

 _Yeah, because I’m the only idiot who would drive in this weather_.

He sighed, and strained already tired eyes through his windshield, trying to see the road in front of him while looking past the constant static of rainfall on the glass. The windshield wipers heaved back and forth, fighting a losing battle for visibility.

Odin listened for the thunder as he turned onto the bridge.

 

\---

 

Ava was holding her suitcase, and she needed to get to the other side.

The east side of the bridge wouldn’t work. There wasn’t anywhere she could climb off. But on the west side, the bridge had a metal lip that looked straight down into the river.

Lightning shook out of the sky, flashing great white sheets of light, but Ava had stopped noticing at this point. She’d been outside for half an hour, walking. The cold was nice, for once. It kept her mind off of her next task.

She stepped out onto the street. It wasn’t a particularly wide bridge, maybe a little more than 50 feet. Her little Mary-Janes splashed on the asphalt as she crossed over the partition and onto the opposite side of the conduit.

Just a few more steps.

The white light was getting brighter now. And after a second, Ava _did_ take note of it, because it was absent of the cracking noise that accompanied lighting.

And a moment later, a sound did come with that white light—a long, uninterrupted blaring noise. Ava turned her head.

 

\---

 

She stepped out of nowhere.

The width of Odin’s vision extended only from where his headlights reached, and she walked right into them with a purpose.

His heart leapt into his throat as he let out a harsh gasp.

“Shit!” he yelled, and he slammed his foot into the brake, throwing himself onto the car horn.

There wasn’t enough time to swerve out of the way, and in this weather, he probably would have swerved right off the bridge. The wet pavement brought his car forward with sickening certainty, and the girl grew in the headlights as he felt the wheels not slowing down fast enough.

It was over in a few seconds.

He had been slowing down, but Odin felt the thud though his entire body as the car hit her. The car stopped almost immediately after the impact, and the girl was pitched several feet in front of the vehicle. 

Odin couldn’t even move, mouth open and only able to listen to the rain for several seconds. But then his mind was shoved back into reality—she wasn’t moving either.

“Oh shit,” he whispered. “Shit, s-shit, s-shit, _shit, shit_ —“ The words gained in intensity as he threw the door open, the interior of the car lighting up as he peeled himself, shaking, into the downpour. With the headlights, he made his way over to her. His throat was strung tight into silence.

She was so little. At first Odin thought that she was a child, and his stomach dropped thinking about his sisters, but then he turned her face over, and took in the tiny, hurt girl laying in front of him. Her eyes were closed. She was soaking wet, and in the darkness he couldn’t see if she had any injuries.

He hadn’t been going that fast. He was close to stopping when he’d hit her, and she would have been okay if it wasn’t for the damn rain, and damn wet road. But right now, that didn’t matter.

The bridge was deserted; the whole city was inside right now. He could get her to a hospital faster than then an ambulance could get here. Carefully he scooped up the girl and walked quickly back to his car, holding her to his chest, feeling her long wet hair bunch against his sleeves. He thought a noise escaped her lips at the movement, but with the pounding water on asphalt, he didn’t trust his ears. Running was beyond him at this point—shock had settled in, but mostly, he was too scared of slipping and dropping her fragile frame.

Bending down, he threw open the passenger door, and pushed himself and the body—the _girl_ , he corrected—into the interior. He clicked on the light.

She was unnaturally pale, but it looked like that was from the rain. Taking her face into his hands, he almost drew back from instinct at how icy she was. Sliding a thumb against her neck, Odin steadied himself, and felt his stomach leap again as he felt her pulse. It was strong. He observed her for a few seconds, watching intently for her chest to rise and fall under a dripping sweater.

Odin felt his eyes pricking, but shook himself. Now wasn’t the time. He fished around for the blanket that was perpetually mired on the car floor, and after pulling off her sweater, wrapped her as tightly as he could.

He shimmied out of the door and into the rain once more, and as he was ducking into the drivers seat, he noticed the suitcase. He hadn’t even seen it the first time he’d gone out—too focused on the girl—but now he ran his way back out, grabbing it, and threw it into the back seat.

Whoever she was, he thought as he peeled away, Odin owed it to her to get her bag. He owed her a lot more. He glanced religiously back at the small form beside him as he got off that bridge, ignoring the rain as it increased it’s drum.

 

\---

 

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

Odin was jerked to attention at the sound of a voice. His dark clothes still drying under florescent hospital lights, he turned to the medical assistant next to the bed. He had white hair, but didn’t look any older than himself.

“How intact she is, I mean.” the young man continued, flipping through the papers in his hand. “No broken bones. She’s… bruised, but it seems she’ll be fine. Honestly, she really has more to worry about in catching pneumonia.” He laughed, before coughing uncomfortably.

Odin looked at the girl in the bed. Her hair was red. Crimson, crumpled under her head, long strands gasping at the air as the water dried up. That color shouldn’t have been on such sterile white and blue sheets.

“She can take one hell of a h-hit.” Odin responded quietly.

“You said you weren’t going very fast. When you—“ the doctor gave him a sidelong glance “— _hit her_ with your car, yes?”

Odin glowered at the tone of the comment. “Sh-she walked in f-front of the car. I couldn’t s-see her.”

The young man nodded.  “Right. I suppose with the weather… Anyway, she’ll likely wake up soon. You can probably leave if you’ve filled out the police report—“

“N-no,” Odin interrupted. “It’s fine. I’ll stay until s-someone she knows can come.”

Odin was an asshole—a fact he would never deny—but among other things, he was not the kind of asshole that would hit a person in a car, and then let them wake up alone in a hospital. Especially when that person was this cute.

Wait, what? Where the hell did that thought come from?! Shit, he was probably just tired.

…She was cute though.

Odin sighed as the medical assistant walked away. He stretched his legs out in front of him, bridging the gap between his seat and the bed frame as he uncomfortably felt the damp jeans shift against his skin. His black jacket was draped over the next chair, drying, along with a towel the nurse had provided for him. The windows were sealed shut and covered in thick blinds, but it did nothing to smother the pounding from outside. The weather had somehow gotten worse, and Odin supposed that in all of this, at least he was in a warm building, and not driving off the road somewhere.

Then again, he was in a _hospital. She_ was in the hospital. He’d put her there. Odin gut shifted uneasily.

Who was she anyway? Why had she been outside like that? No umbrella, no coat—and in the middle of a bridge. Surely there wasn’t anywhere that she needed to go _that badly._ If she’d really needed to go somewhere, and it couldn’t wait, why wouldn’t she just call a taxi? The driver would probably give you hell for making them work in a storm like this, but Christ, _why would you walk?_

Odin was about to go further with this thought, but then he remembered what _he_ had been doing on that bridge. Olai. He hadn’t called his brother yet.

He pulled out his phone, pressing his contact, and brought it up to his ear, listening to the monotonous ring as he examined the girl’s face, and the way pink warmth was slowly recoloring her features.

_“Odin? What happened? You gonna make it back tonight?”_

Odin turned his attention back to the phone. “I d-don’t know. T-th-the storm…” He breathed heavily and put a hand over his eyes. Might as well get it over with. “I… I h-h-hit a girl.”

There was a pause, and then Olai responded with significantly more interest. _“What—like, with the car?”_

“Y-yeah.”

_“Jesus Christ… Is it dented?”_

Odin growled. “The girl’s f-f-fine, thanks for asking.”

_“Well, you wouldn’t sound this calm if you’d killed her. She gonna sue you or something?”_

“She’s n-not awake yet. I’m going to p-pay for the hospital bill, though.”

Odin heard a groan on the other side of the call. _“It better be coming out of your account, that’s for sure. And seriously, if she’s fine, you better hope that car isn’t dented.”_

“The c-car—I-it wasn’t m-my main concern at w-when it happened. I was—“

 _“Yeah, yeah. I got it. I’ll see you tomorrow. Call me when something goes wrong.”_ The receiver clicked off.

 

\---

 

Ava opened her eyes.

She was warmer than before. Her toes were still cold, though.

But where were her shoes?

She looked down to find baby blue sheets pulled over her, and began to process where she was through the chemical, medicinal smell. She tilted her head to the side, and was immediately startled by the imposing grey mass of a person slumped in the chair next to the bed. It was boy, one she’d never seen before, his eyes closed and his face resting on his palm. His clothes and his hair were so dark compared to his surroundings.

“Oh, good, you’re awake!”

A man wearing scrubs was walking into the room, smiling genuinely from over his clipboard. “I hope you’re feeling alright. Do you know why you’re here?”

Ava looked up at the ceiling, already becoming uneasy with the man’s stare. “Yes.” It wasn’t entirely true, but she didn’t want to answer more questions.

“Ah! That’s good. I suppose before we continue, you’ll want to call someone, to let them know you’re okay. They’ll be worried, especially on a night like this. Is there someone that I can—“

“No.” She cut in decidedly.

“…No? Are… you sure? Surely you—“

“No.” she said again. “There’s no one.”

 

\---

 

Something hit Odin in the face.

He jerked awake as he felt a wet, slapping sensation, catching himself as he heard a thud on the floor in front of him, feeling aggravation hit him. The projectile was a shoe. A soaking Mary-Jane.

He looked up, and suddenly he wasn’t mad. His chest clenched at the sight of the girl in the bed, bunched up like an animal. Though at the moment she looked less like a scared rabbit and more like a very pissed off rabbit.

“D-did…did you just hit me with your s-shoe?”

“Did you hit me with your car?” she shot back.

Odin’s mouth dropped open in spite of the fact that he didn’t have a response. A few noises fell struggled out before he sat up straight.

“T-that’s…fair.” he said slowly.

She didn’t say anything. She dropped eye contact and shifted onto her back. A silence passed in the room, little noises filtering in from the hospital staff failing to fill the space. Odin swallowed.

“I-I’ll pay for the bill. I-I’m s-s-s-sorry.” Odin’s stomach knotted in frustration at his stutter. He didn’t like talking, but he didn’t want to just stare at this poor girl. She wouldn’t look at him.

 “M-my name’s O-Odin.”

She took a small breath, and said in an even smaller voice. “My name is Ava.”

Ava. A gorgeous name, not one he heard often. Odin had an appreciation for others with off beat names, although “Ava” was much more common than Odin. Most names were.

"I’m g-guessing the doctor t-told you everything, while I was a-asleep.” he said lamely.

She nodded, then looked down at her knees.  Her hair shifted over her cheeks, the red locks a little ruffled from laying down. “Look, you don’t have to stay here. You can go. I can leave in the morning.”

He shook his head quickly. “I’ll s-stay until someone gets here f-for you. It’s n-not a p-problem—”

“No one’s coming. Really, it’s fine.”

Odin stopped. The certainty of that answer threw him off entirely. “…Can t-they not make it out t-tonight?” It wasn’t like Odin was upset about leaving—he just wanted to go home and forget about this godforsaken trip—but something about her tone bothered him.

She glanced over at the doorway, and held a pause for just a touch too long. “…Yeah. They can’t make it out. The rain, you know…”

Odin studied her face, and the dark rings clouding under her eyelashes. He didn’t know what to say, or do for that matter. A moment ago, he was praying that someone would show up soon, so that they both might escape the position they were in. He was too proud to cut and run from a bad situation without resolving it, but Ava probably didn’t care to spend time with the asshole that put her hospital. And something was wrong here.

The silence had drawn on. Ava made a frustrated noise then, caught between anger and discomfort, and brought her eyes to his. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t even know me—I have it figured out, okay? You don’t even have to pay the bill if you don’t want,” she mumbled.

Odin scoffed. “Don’t b-be ridiculous, I’ll pay. And really, I d-don’t m-mind staying if—“

“ _It doesn’t matter, okay?”_ Her voice slid on the edge of what would be an overpowering volume, the hackles of her shoulders rising in suite. But then her little frame curled back down, the strength of her voice reaching her own ears and smothering the brightness of her emotions. She looked down at her knees again.

“I’m sorry...” She murmured. “That was rude. But… You really don’t have to stay. I’ve got it figured out.” A pause. “Sorry for getting in front of your car.”

And suddenly the reality of the situation hit Odin, much later than it should have, or at least later than it would have if hadn’t been so late, or so rainy, or if he hadn’t momentarily thought he’d killed a person earlier that night. It became very clear to him why there wasn’t anyone coming for her. Why she didn’t mind if he left, why she wanted to leave alone. Why she’d been walking across the bridge. And especially why she hadn’t even had an umbrella, because she had been planning on getting wet no matter what the weather might have been.

 

\---

 

"W-Why were you on that b-bridge?” he asked, his voice climbing in urgency.

Her face whipped in his direction, her red eyes crumpling along the edges. “What?”

“What w-were you going t-to d-do?”

Ava could say nothing, but the flat up and down movements of her breaths increased steadily. For the first time all night, the two were holding eye contact. She wished those violet eyes would look away—she wished that he wouldn’t get involved. She wished Odin sounded less concerned and more angry, so that she could match him with her own anger, an emotion she could handle right now.

Why did this have to happen? She didn’t want to explain herself, she hadn’t even let herself think about it. She had just been… going.

He didn’t even know her, he probably didn’t really care. He probably just wanted to go home.

 _She_ wanted to go home.

And now thinking about it, and thinking about the words coming out of her mouth, and hearing them out loud, was making her vision glitter, and the boy who sat in front of her was fractured. She couldn’t keep looking at Odin like this, and she couldn’t look down because then he’d get the answer he was looking for.

Something told her he already knew. She looked at her lap.

Her hands were folded together, and her right hand squeezed her left index finger. The room was passing in silence, filled only with her shaking.

How stupid she was. How hilarious this situation was, in reality.

Finally, she said, forcing a tiny laughter into her voice, “What kind of an idiot goes to jump off a bridge and gets hit by car, huh?”

 

\---

 

Her hair was blocking him from the side of her vision. Odin wasn’t responding. It was a difficult sentence to follow up, especially listening to water _plip_ onto the bed sheet. He didn’t want to fuck this up. He didn’t want her to think that he was trying to be a knight-in-shining-armor. He wasn’t trying to be a hero. But he didn’t want to lecture her either.

He thought about every time Olai had beat him up as a kid, or every time he heard his sisters call him a freak, or tell him his stutter made him sound retarded before he’d yell at them for using that word. He tried to remember the moment he felt the loneliest, so that he could avoid talking down to her.

But in the end, Odin didn’t know what she was going through. Hell, whatever it was, it was probably a hell of a lot worse than he’d ever felt, and he wasn’t about to equate himself to her feelings. He really _hadn’t_ been in her shoes. Saying that he had been was not what she needed to hear.

“Y-you’re n-not an idiot.” He said suddenly.

She scoffed, and sniffed, and she weakly rubbed her hand over her eyes. “I don’t want your pity, okay?”

“I’m n-not pitying you. I… It’s n-not stupid. T-to want t-to do that. A-and it’s m-my fault you got hit.”

She glanced up at him confused, and panic washed over him as he thought about his choice of words. He scrambled to elaborate, a hand shooting up to the back of his neck.

“I mean—you s-sh- _shouldn’t_ d-d-do th-that—j-jump, I mean—I just m-meant that a-a lot of people th-think that suicide is—th-they think t-that it’s s-selfish, o-o-or c-cowardly, or… ‘e-e-emotionally immature’, or some bullshit l-like that.”

His face was violet. His stutter was just making a butchered mess of it all. He took a deep breath before looking up again.

“...Y-you’re not s-selfish, or i-immature, for f-f-feeling alone. You’re n-not stupid. Th-the way you feel is valid. S-sometimes, you t-think that’s t-the only—I m-mean, you shouldn’t, p-please don’t do that.”

Ava blinked slowly. His heart was throbbing against his ears—he was screwing this up so bad. He was just making her hurt worse.

Odin looked down and realized he was bouncing his leg, and that he was biting his lips again. _He didn’t want to lecture her._

Ava sniffed again. Her lips weren’t shaking anymore, which relieved the ache in this chest. Usually, he could handle girls crying—three sisters had relieved him of that weakness—but Ava… she was so small, and so by herself. Except for him, he realized painfully. She would have been better off with anyone but him.

The two listened to the hum of the machines around them, listening to medical staff wheel about outside of the room. He bit into his bottom lip, feeling the flesh buckled under the push of his front teeth.

“J-just… why d-did… why did you w-want to do that?

 

\---

 

She didn’t.

Ava Ire _did not_ want to jump off that bridge.

She didn’t want to die.

She wanted to run a flower shop.

She wanted to wear cute underwear everyday, and smile every time she saw herself in the mirror.

She wanted people’s faces to light up when they saw her, just like they did with other people.

She wanted to sleep in clean linen.

She wanted to know what it was like to get used to someone holding her, to become familiar with someone.

She wanted enough friends to have an enormous dinner with, one where by the end of the night, they didn’t know if they were stuffed by the food or by all their laughter.

She wanted a bunny. At least one bunny. At _least_.

She wanted to live in a cottage with poppies growing next to it.

She wanted a family.

She wanted to sleep in when it rained, and listen to the thunder.

She wanted to feel the way her hair tickled the small of her back when it was soft and she shook her head back and forth, just to feel it sweep over her skin.

She wanted to read books, even if they were bad, but especially if they were good.

She wanted to eat ice cream straight out of the container and not care.

She wanted someone to share it with.

She wanted to wake up and be comfortable in her bed, and to want to get up.

She wanted to leave this city.

She wanted to live.

She wanted

 

She was so tired. _So tired_. She shifted back onto the stiff pillow, crinkling beneath her like paper, no longer interested in keeping herself propped up.

She let them slide back into a silence, listening to the world outside this room, that was so bloated with their presence that it’d become it’s own universe entirely. There wasn’t rain, or hospitals, or bridges in this room. The grey wall paper and laminate tile and everything else evaporated. It was only them.

 

\---

 

Ava winced as her bruises protested her walk out of the hospital.

Odin’s hand hovered over back, trying not to irritate her soreness, but also keeping at the ready in case her weak form slipped on slick concrete, shimmering in dull greyness as the sky emptied the last of itself from last night.

Odin—Odin Arrow, as she’d learned—had offered to drop her off anywhere she wanted. He’d stayed the night, and Ava was too unfocused to decide if she was glad about that or not.

She had, however, decided that he was okay. Okay, in that he wasn’t just doing this so that he could feel like an upstanding citizen. He didn’t seem like someone who would talk someone off a ledge so that he could have something to brag about at the gates of heaven. She liked his stutter. She felt a little bad about that, since he probably didn’t, but his speech made her feel safer, knowing he wasn’t going to talk down to her.

Ava sighed. Her own thought process wasn’t even making sense.

The whole world around them still seemed like it was underwater. It felt smothered, the scent of rainy tar and grass lifting from the ground in waves. As they trekked across the parking lot, Ava could only faintly hear taxis and car horns from the early risers of the storm, the rest of the city still hesitant to emerge from their shelters. Odin led her around deeper puddles, but Ava could already feel dampness seep through her shoes. The entire lot, nearly empty, was submerged in a thin layer of wetness. It created something of an enormous mirror, and Ava watched herself and Odin beneath her feet, the two pairs plodding along at an equal pace and lifting ripples into the water around them.

They made their way to his car. It was black, and pretty nice, and Ava felt a pang of guilt at the thought of her denting it. She pulled Odin’s coat around her tighter—he’d draped it over her, since her sweaters and coats had been in her suitcase. It dwarfed her completely, but it made her feel cozy, and it smelled wonderful.

He opened the passenger door for her, and she pushed in slowly, trying not lean on her left side too much. He walked around the front of the car, and slid into the driver’s seat, sticking the keys into the ignition and starting up, immediately cranking the heater. He glanced at her, and cleared his throat.

“S-so… do you have an a-apartment?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. “No. I was staying with a friend until last night.”

His face pinched in confusion. “W-Why until last night?”

“I was staying there until I figured out how to get out of the city. But we’d been fighting, and… I needed to leave. I couldn’t stay there anymore.”

Odin nodded.

But, to her surprise, he didn’t ask for an address.

 

\---

 

Odin felt horrible. Horribly guilty, but accompanied by a twisting of his gut that told him what he was about to do was shitty.

He’d hit someone with a car. She was going to jump off that bridge. She had cried last night.

And now, he was just going to walk away from her. It felt like he was ripping himself out of quicksand and leaving her in it. He barely knew her, but he’d spent the last 12 hours focusing on her almost exclusively. After all of that, he was going to drop her off on a sidewalk somewhere and drive away. She didn’t even have a home to go home _to_. And what was to say she wouldn’t go back to that bridge? She had been intent on doing it last night... Odin imagined making it home, only for him to find some morbid text in the newspaper a few days later, depicting a nameless unfortunate found swollen in the bay. The thought made him sick.

He gripped the steering wheel, and listened to motor hum underneath them. He stared intently at the wheel. The longer he waited, the more irritated she was going to get.

Might as well ask. He swallowed hard.

“L-listen,” he started, ducking his eyes. “I d-don’t know what your p-plan is to get out of the city. You s-said you wanted t-t-to leave. B-but… i-if you want... you can c-come with me.”

He was almost too coward to glance at her to look for a reaction. Sure enough, her visage was wrought with cautious bewilderment, eyebrows knit together over shaded eyes. His heart thumped.

“I-I mean… That way, y-you have a place t-to go. And it’s a-away from here. l live with my s-siblings, and our h-house is out of the way…”

Odin cursed himself for not meeting her gaze. He brought his eyes up to hers, violet meeting scarlet. “You c-can stay there until y-you figure something out.” he finished softly.

Ava paused, and looked very guarded. Odin was sweating. This was horrible idea. He sounded like a creep.

“…Why did you wait until we were in the car until asking?”

Oh, Christ. She probably thought he was going to lock her in, and drag her out into the woods to have his way with her. _Oh god_.

“I just… I d-don’t know.”

Another pause. She turned and looked through the front windshield, watching rain drops run tracks into each other.

“…I don’t even know you.”

Odin nodded quickly, following with, “I-If you don’t want to come, I’m n-not going t-to make you. I’ll drop you off at a h-hotel, or s-something…”

He felt even worse than before. Not because she’d declined, but because he felt foolish, and probably made her feel even more uncomfortable. She barely knew him—hell, Ava had known him for even less time than he’d known her.

He waited for an address, or a location, but to his surprise, she didn’t give him one.

 

\---

  

She wanted to run a flower shop.

She wanted to wear cute underwear everyday, and smile every time she saw herself in the mirror.

She wanted people’s faces to light up when they saw her, just like they did with other people.

She wanted to sleep in clean linen.

She wanted to know what it was like to get used to someone holding her, to become familiar with someone.

She wanted enough friends to have an enormous dinner with, one where by the end of the night, they didn’t know if they were stuffed by the food or by all their laughter.

She wanted a bunny. At least one bunny. At _least_.

She wanted to live in a cottage with poppies growing next to it.

She wanted a family.

She wanted to sleep in when it rained, and listen to the thunder.

She wanted to feel the way her hair tickled the small of her back when it was soft and she shook her head back and forth, just to feel it sweep over her skin.

She wanted to read books, even if they were bad, but especially if they were good.

She wanted to eat ice cream straight out of the container and not care.

She wanted someone to share it with.

She wanted to wake up and be comfortable in her bed, and to want to get up.

 

And Ava Ire was not going to get any of that in this city.

 

“Okay.”

“W-What?” he said, his neck snapping upwards.

“Okay. I’ll go with you.”

He blinked. “O-oh. Then—“

“ _But—!”_ she barked, whipping around to startle him, eyes flaming in a way that she hadn’t felt in a long time. “You do not get to think for _one second_ that I am doing this for you. Don’t think that I’m going because you ‘saved me’. You hit me with your car, and that stopped me, and for that I thank you, but I am leaving this god forsaken city for _me.”_

She refused to back down from his gaze, and she could tell he knew better than to disobey her. Slowly, she settled back, sitting dignified.

"I’m doing this for myself. Got it?”

 

\---

 

He was stunned into silence. He was shocked. He was _amazed._

Where did that come from?

And suddenly, he realized he had nothing to worry about at all.

He put the car into reverse, not dropping her from his sight, a smile creeping onto his mouth.

“G-got it, firefly.”


	2. Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part is features a lot of the Arrow siblings, and is a wee bit shorter. I will be updating here, and on tumblr as well. Please tell me what you’d like to see in the next part, or change, or if there is any grammar issues. School is over, so I’ll try and update this more regularly. Let me know what you like. Enjoy!

She’d fallen asleep after about an hour in the car.

He hadn’t learned much about her in that time.

But, he supposed, that might have been for the best. Odin had spent some time telling her about his family, and where they were going, so that she had an idea of what she was getting into. It also gave her some time to change her mind before they got out of the city limits. She hadn’t.

The burst of energy he’d seen at the beginning of day flickered out quickly. That could have been from a number of things, most namely being inside the car of a nearly complete stranger, and having spent the night in a hospital. In any case, her fatigue had been evident early on, and she drifted quietly away from consciousness in the passenger seat.

He glanced over at her as the car glided over slick, woodland road, the tar still struggling to swallow the rain. She had her feet pulled up on the seat, and was curled against door, nearly swimming in his jacket. He had almost a foot on her in terms of height, and the extra fabric in the garment served as a blanket over her arms and legs. Her eyes were dark, and mouth hidden behind the collar.

He exhaled through his nose and looked back to the road. Anxiety was hammering its way up his stomach and throat. He’d probably feel better once he got back home—

God dammit. Why did he keep forgetting about Olai?

He growled under his breath and sighed. He needed a smoke, anyway.

 

\---

 

" _Is this a fucking joke?”_

“N-no, it’s not.”

" _She’s actually coming with you?”_

"Y-yes.”

_"…Willingly?”_

“A-are you d-done?!”

" _This isn’t what I meant when I told you to hit on girls more.”_

Odin let out a snarling breath, frustrated at his brothers antics. “Olai—j-just, is the g-guest room c-cleaned up or n-not?!”

There was a hum on the other of the line. _“I don’t know, probably not. Raven stashes some of her crap in there.”_

“W-would y-you please tell her t-to move it?”

_“Hell no!”_

 “ _Why not?!”_

" _Your stowaway girl—“_

“A-Ava.”

“Ava— _is your problem, not Raven’s. You’re bringing her home—you figure out where she stays.”_ Olai chuckled suddenly. _“Besides, won’t she be staying in_ your _room?”_

Odin put his hand over his cellphone while he spat out a few choice curse words. For the first time in his life, Odin thought he’d rather have his brother be angry than… whatever obnoxiousness he was being now. He returned the device to his ear once Olai started talking again.

" _—are you? When are you getting home?”_

“Ah… th-thirty minutes? M-maybe?”

" _Jesus, why’d you wait so long to call?”_

“I d-don’t know, I was d-distracted.”

" _Why? Is she cute?”_

“F-fuck off.”

" _That’s a yes.“_

Odin hung up.

Pushing his hand into the pocket of the spare jacket he put on, he wrenched out his pipe and stuck it between his teeth. Lighting it, he leaned, irritated, against the side of the car, looking into the woodland surrounding the road as he took a drag. He’d pulled off to the side of the road to make the call—no need to wake Ava up with his arguing. She needed the rest.

His anxiety was settling down through aid of the pipe, but his brother’s poking had struck a different set of nerves. Odin had his hood up to combat droplets rolling off overhanging tree branches, and just standing outside was clearing his mind a bit. Fresh air was good—although the smoking suggested otherwise.

He turned to look at Ava through the window, and was surprised to see red eyes staring back at him.

 

\---

 

Ava opened her eyes slowly. She could hear talking, muffled, but growing in agitation. As she focused on it, she recognized it as Odin’s, and realized at the same time that he was no longer in the car, nor were they moving anymore. Ava stretched her legs out of the jacket; stiffening them before feeling them go limp, the kinks in her back crinkling.

She looked around hesitantly, before turning herself to the window, cringing at the bruises on her side. She could see him now—leaning against the car on his phone—but he didn’t seem to notice her movement. He was engrossed in whatever conversation he was having, obviously not a very good one. Odin sounded irritated, and paused a moment before, blushing profusely, swearing, and tucking away the device. Ava watched him light a pipe.

That explained the smell on the jacket. And looking past Odin, she finally saw her surroundings—pine trees, a far cry from the city she’d escaped.

Excitement reared in her chest, just for a moment, at the idea of having gotten away from that nightmare, but she reluctantly shoved it away from herself. There was no point in getting her hopes up too high.

She exhaled and looked up, only able to see a slice of Odin’s face around his hood. A long wisp of purple smoke slid between his lips, matching his eyes.

What beautiful eyes.

Suddenly, Odin turned towards her, and she jumped as they made eye contact. The boy’s expression lifted from thought and tumbled into sheepishness as he put away his pipe and walk back around to the driver’s seat.

 He slid back inside, and shut the door behind him. He coughed. “S-sorry for waking you u-up.”

She gave him a little shrug. “It’s okay. You didn’t have to get out of the car.”

Turning the ignition, he shook his head. “I a-always argue w-with my brother—i-it was going t-t-to get loud. And I’m n-not allowed t-to smoke in h-here.”

Ava furrowed her brow. “Why?”

“It’s m-my brother’s. I w-was using it f-for business.”

She then felt the guilt return to her. This wasn’t even _his_ car. “…I’m sorry if I dented it. And I’m sorry for making your brother mad.”

Odin turned to her. “D-don’t worry about i-it. Y-you’re okay, th-that’s what m-matters.”

That was unexpected. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt too embarrassed to keep looking at him, so instead readied her gaze at her ankles. The car was droning along now, but the silence between them wasn’t the same as it had been before.

           

\---

 

They were in the driveway. He had parked the car, and pulled the keys out, extinguishing the mechanical hum. Neither of them made a move to get out. The pair sat and stared out the windshield.

Odin wondered what the hell he was doing.

“I-It’s not too l-late to change y-your mind.” He said softly.

She didn’t respond.

Why wasn’t she getting out of the car? Why wasn’t _he_ getting out of the car, or doing something?

And suddenly, Odin’s hand, which had been resting gear stick, felt very warm. He turned to look at it, and was surprised to find her hand clutching onto his fingers, shaking. His gaze followed the contours of her wrist up her arm, and finally to her face, which now mirrored what it had been last night.

A few tears were slipping down her cheeks, very quickly summoning more in their wake, trails joining under her jaw, and tremors racked her chin and lips. Her eyes were downcast, staring at their hands, for what must have been emotional inability to do otherwise.

“Thank you.” she said.

 

It was all too much for her. He should have seen that so much sooner, the way he should have realized what she was doing on that bridge the moment he saw her. His mind was always a step behind what he was seeing when he was looking at her, and because of that, he’d put her in a hospital, made her cry, and driven her out of her home city, and into strange place that might as well have been the abyss.

She had every right, and then some, to cry because of whatever had made her go to that bridge, but because of his thoughtlessness, instead of being able go to her own comforts, she had to cry in an unfamiliar car, in an unfamiliar place in front of a very unfamiliar man.

 

Odin felt like he’d been shot in the stomach, and there was nothing more in this moment that he wanted then to lean over and dry her face off and hold her and tell it was going to be okay, because this was a view he wished his eyes had never graced over, and a view he would make for damn sure he’d never see again.

Odin opened his mouth, letting instinct take over.

_Knock knock._

Both of them jumped at the sharp noise on glass, and Odin felt himself choke on the air in his own throat. His head swiveled around to meet his brother’s face, staring in from the outside.

Her hand had disappeared from his. Ava was wiping her face rapidly and turned her body to get out. Odin, coughing, followed in suite, standing up to face his brother.

If Olai had seen anything that had happened, he certainly did not show it, because the older boy’s face held the sourness that his voice had lacked on the phone.

“You’re paying for the dent.” He growled.

Thank _Christ_ for tinted windows.

“Y-yeah, I know,” he muttered, his eyes shifting anxiously to watch as the passenger side door clicked open. His throat pulled taut as she stood up and turned.

But he was not met with tears had been expecting. Ava had cleaned herself up in considerable fashion, and nothing of their prior moment revealed itself on her visage. The skin around her eyes wasn’t swollen, and only showed the smallest tinge of pink, a detail that Odin wouldn’t have even noticed had he not known she’d been crying.

Ava smiled over the car at Olai, whose pinched expression disappeared into cool welcome.

“ _You_ must be Ava. It’s nice to meet you.” The older brother said, sliding over to her side of the car. Ava nodded.

“Are you Odin’s brother?”

"I am.”

“I’m very sorry about your car—“

Olai shook his head and put a hand on her shoulder, which strangely prickled Odin. “Don’t worry about that. The idiot over there is going to pay for it.” He said, flicking his thumb to Odin. Ava gave a short, uncomfortable laugh, before reaching for the backseat door.

Odin took a step toward her. “L-let me get your b-bag—“

“ _It’s fine!_ ” She exclaimed, pulling the suitcase towards her chest. “It’s fine. Is it alright if I go in?” Her pitch of her voice had ascended, as if she was trying to flee the moment.

Olai made a large gesture to the house. “Please, ladies first.”

Ava took one last look at Odin, her mouth ajar to speak, before turning and strolling towards the door, her skirt swinging lightly behind her.

Odin exhaled through his nose, releasing a breath too long held. Olai sauntered over to him, neither of brother’s eyes moving from Ava’s receding form. A snicker emerged from the eldest brother’s unflappable smirk, and Olai hit Odin in the side.

“You should hit girls with the car more often.”

 

\---

 

The house was beautiful—old, but well-loved. Ava shuffled into the kitchen, flinching as the pain in her side escalated in her motions, and when she looked up, she was startled to find two girls perched on the counter. Not because she wasn’t expecting them—Odin had mentioned twin sisters—but that they were poised, like they had been waiting for her to spring some sort of trap. Their eyes were narrowed ever so slightly, looking down on her curiously, made ever more obvious by her short stature. Ava swallowed.

“You must be Crow and Raven,” she said shakily. She looked from one to the other, but they gave no response, and no indication of who was who. She coughed quietly.

“I’m guessing your brother told you about me… I’m Ava.” She did not extend a gesture for a handshake, because it was obvious that she was not going to get it. Ava prayed Odin was close behind her, and that they could leave the room. The girl with a bow in her hair swung her foot idly. Footsteps and muffled talk rose up from the front entrance, and Ava gained the assurance to pull herself from the silence.

“Um, could either of you tell me—“

“Are you here to have sex with Odin?” the one on the left said suddenly, expression unwaveringly blunt. Ava’s face burst into warmth, burning her ears and cheeks. Indignant anger bubbled up, but it competed with embarrassment as she struggled to respond.

“E-Excuse me?!”

The girl continued, the bow in her hair bouncing with her head. “Are you like a live-in prostitute or something?”

“Because you’re way to good-looking for him unless he paid you—“

“Has he shown you where his room is—?”

“ _Oh m-my GOD_.” A shout erupted from behind Ava, and Odin came stalking in,  a vivid array of violet spreading over his face, and shoved the girls off the counter.

“What?—hey! No pushing—“

“We’re just asking—“

“ _Shut. Up.”_ he hissed, forcing the pair out of the room. He huffed out a breath of frustration, before swiveling back around. He put a hand on Ava’s shoulder and ushered in the opposite direction, clearly too embarrassed to say anything more, and Ava honestly didn’t mind, so long as it meant escaping the twins. She could barely look at him after that. Ava could hear the girls giggling as they departed.

Odin and Ava made their way up a flight of stairs and down a hallway, with Odin quietly remarking what things were while pointedly avoiding eye-contact, before they another set of narrow stairs, leading to what must have been the third floor.

"The g-guest room is up here,” he murmured, motioning with his hand. “You c-can lead, so in c-case you f-fall…” Ava nodded.

They made their way up slowly, her bruises still protesting, and Odin’s watched her carefully, hand on the wall, saying a small “C-careful” when she hesitated at the landing. They reached another landing with a door at the top, and Odin reached past her, swinging it open.

Dust particles filtered through the air as Ava’s eyes adjusted from the dark stairway. The room was long, with a large window at either end over looking the property, filling the space with natural white light. What she would have assumed to be a stuffy attic was actually laden with cool air, underscored by the fact that the room was entirely empty—save for two pieces of furniture, both dark-grain wood, matching the walls and floors. The first was an elaborately carved vanity, pocketed heavily with drawers and cupboards, and a folded mirror sat on top, so laden with dust it was barely reflective at all. However, the second piece of furniture demanded the greater attention—a massive canopy bed, clearly unused, as seen in it’s lack of sheets or covering, but just as richly carved and sized as it’s partner.

The sight of such a bed would have been welcome after last night, had it not been for the circumstances of her arrival; this was too much for someone like her, she thought, someone who was just a visitor, an momentary inconvenience who was being housed out of pity. And besides the grandeur of it, it was the _size_ of it that unnerved Ava, especially after the interrogation she just had with the twins. It was clearly not for one person.

Clearly, Odin was thinking the same thing, because he was rubbing the back of his head, glancing sheepishly at the bed. “I know i-it’s kind of… _ornate_ …” he said the word, as if a little sickened by it. “The or-original owners m-must have build it u-up here, and it’s i-impossible to get it down the s-st-stairs without d-destroying it. So… it stayed up here. It w-was here when w-we got the place, apparently.”

Ava shook her head and swallowed, fingers fidgeting at the handle of her trunk, now damp with sweat. “This is really too much—is there another room—I don’t want to take such a nice space—“

It was Odin’s turn to shake his head. “It’s r-really the only guest s-space. And trust me, I’d p-put you somewhere else if I could—the h-heating up here is shit. But the r-rest are offices or storage, s-since we don’t get a lot of v-visitors.”

“Family doesn’t come over a lot?”

“N-no family left to c-come over.”

A burdened silence occupied the space between them after those words. Ava left his side, walking up to the bad frame and running her fingers down the patterns on one of the poster beams. Odin cleared his throat, eyes downcast and hands in his pockets.

“I’m s-sorry about what th-they said to you.”

Ava squeezed her eyes closed.

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s n-not.”

           

\---

 

The room would not shake the quiet. Odin was just upset now—at himself, at his brother, especially Crow and Raven. Ava’s back was turned to him, and in all of this, he just wanted to see the fire and anger in her flare back up, as it had in the hospital parking lot, just to show that she was okay. And what had happened in the driveway had not departed. There was a hollowness left by her crying that had not been resolved that desperately need to.

For a final time, Odin attempted to reach her.

“Listen… In the c-car, I—“

“Odin,” she said suddenly, turning to face him, red hair sweeping around her and cutting him off. Her eyes were blank. Hearing her say his name out loud changed the atmosphere, so quickly that his head lightened. “Could you leave for a moment so I could change?”

He blinked. “Ah… y-yeah. Sure. I’ll bring y-you up some clean linen l-later.”

She nodded, and turned away. He followed in suite.

Odin shut the door behind him, and as he turned the corner of the landing, he saw a flash of movement at the bottom, and a small snicker carried up the staircase. Odin narrowed his eyes and made a swift descent, finding Crow and Raven at the bottom.

“Does she like the bed?” Crow sneered. Snarling, Odin whapped the side of their heads.

"Ow! Don’t hit!”

_“D-don’t call the guest a pr-prostitute!”_

“We didn’t call her a prostitute, we _asked_ if she was one!” Raven huffed, hands on hips. “Besides, you expect us to believe that she agreed to come out _here_?”

“The middle of nowhere—after you ‘put her in a hospital’, no less.”

“What normal person agrees to go live with a stranger?”

“If it were Olai doing this, you’d ‘a thought the same thing!”

 _“Sh-shut up!”_ he spat, venom loaded in his voice. They stopped, looking cross. He exhaled. “L-leave Ava alone. S-She’s going through a lot, and she doesn’t n-need the harassment. I don’t know what O-Olai told you, and I don’t care. Keep it t-to yourselves. And if I h-hear you being rude again, you’re b-both grounded.”

The two glared at him, before stalking off towards the stairs to the ground floor. Odin turned his back, the burst of energy fizzling out, until he heard Crow mutter in intentional finality,

“Why does Odin suck so much right now? I thought that was _her_ job.”

A split second passed before the words clicked in Odin’s head.

His face lit up at the imagery, and he whipped around only to find the two thundering down the stairs in a fit of laughter. He howled in frustration—that was a fight that wasn’t going to let up. Christ, it hadn’t let up in twelve years. And why the hell were two 12-year-olds so vulgar, anyway?

He sighed again, exhaustedly.

For a moment, he’d nearly wanted to tell them off about _why_ Ava was here, but it was merely a spark of an idea. That wasn’t his story to share. It wasn’t even a story he knew the breadth of. And after the little stunt they pulled, Odin doubted either of them deserved to hear it, from himself or Ava.

…How was Ava?

He hadn’t gotten through at all. It seemed surreal that he’d been looking at her break down in the car just a few minutes ago, to have a moment so loaded with emotion be so quickly shattered and moved past.

But maybe she just needed time. She was in a strange place.

…They’d _just met._ She needed to figure out things for herself before she shared it with him.

Odin looked at the stairway to the third floor a final time, his eyes tracing the dark wooded ascent of the narrow corridor.

 

\---

 

Ava had considered waiting for Odin to return with new bedding before lying down, but once she was the only one in the room, her head began swimming in dizziness and apprehension hammered up her throat and into her mouth. She was on her back, blinking up at the canopy and absently tracing the lattice patterns on the fabric as her mind drained. She sank a little into the softness of the mattress, her crown of crimson fanned out around her, and Ava pushed her shoes off using her toes, listening to the duel _thuds_ as the fell from the end of the bed. Her fingers impulsively clutched the cushioning, looking for a blanket to hide under.

How strange it all was that not twelve hours ago she had woken up in this same position, in a hospital bed that was far less comfortable and in a place that felt far less safe than this, and that not a full day ago she had woken up in a room that she could’ve called her own, and that in that completely familiar space she had made the decision to kill herself. How strange she had tried acting on that decision so soon ago, and that she had failed so pathetically in completing that decision, failing so completely in an intention to end her life that she had altered it completely, and was now in the home of a kind stranger, and lying on her back on a bed that should not have been for one person.

Ava did not know when she had started crying.


	3. Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I deeply apologize for the lateness of this chapter. There was a period of second-guessing on where to go next with the plot, and where I wanted to end up, but hopefully that is behind me now. Thank you so much for the kind words in the comments and in your tags—please let me know what you like best, or would like to see more/less of! I love hearing from you!

She kept dreaming about the bridge.

It had been happening since she arrived at the house. That was inevitable, she supposed. That night had been composed of several traumas that were all strong enough on their own to invade her subconscious. The combination of them all made the recreation of that night unceasing in her dreams.

The dream always started when she was at the partition between the two lanes. It was never earlier than that—in fact, she wasn’t even sure if the rest of the bridge was behind her. She never remembered to look back. Her clothes were the same, as was the weather, but she couldn’t see anything beyond the bridge itself. There wasn’t a city. It was her and the bridge and the water and eventually, it was the car.

 

\---

 

Some part of Odin’s brain must have told him that taking Ava in was going to be a simple process, merely changing the “Arrow household” to the “Arrow household, plus one guest”. And hell, that would have been a relaxing truth, if it had been a truth at all. In reality, he’d been walking on eggshells since she arrived—eggshells that, evidently, only he could hear or see.

He wanted so badly to approach her, and tie off the conversation they’d failed to have, but over the next two weeks, he either couldn’t bring himself to make Ava think about her past, or couldn’t get Ava by herself, or find a moment that such a conversation could survive in. The fragility of the topic made it unsustainable in certain atmospheres—and fleeting in others, as seen in the car and her room. In any case, it would only happen if they were by themselves.

But moreover, Odin felt more and more like a jackass for wanting to talk to her about it. She didn’t owe him shit, and she certainly didn’t owe him a life story.

Who was he to make her talk about a suicide attempt?

He just wanted to make her feel better. Maybe talking about it would help. She was probably in her worst place of life, given that it was a life she had intended to end. Leaving her by herself seemed utterly counterintuitive—a lack of people to turn to might have been why she went to the bridge. But he didn’t know. It could’ve been _anything_ that drove her to that point. He didn’t know anything about her.

In seven days, his anxiety had skyrocketed, which by itself made him feel like a wreck, but also because, on the surface, he felt like he was being a moron about the whole thing. Ava seemed _fine._

She’d assimilated to the household well. She was pleasant to be around. She kept to herself, but he hadn’t seen her cry since the first day. She worked around the house, including doing laundry, and for the first time in years, the wash was done on a discernable schedule, and, god forbid, _consistently folded._ And she’d thankfully manage to avoid further scorn from the twins. She was polite. She smiled at his siblings.

It was like watching her wear an elaborate costume; one that had been intricately made long before she’d ever met him.

When he looked at her, the anxiety crawled back into his throat, and he didn’t know what worried him the most. The fact that she knew how to wear it so well because of clear experience, the fact that the fire color of her hair was only thing distracting from the lifelessness in her eyes, or the fact that she couldn’t keep this up. Not forever, he thought.

He was waiting for it to fall apart. They were both waiting for it.

He didn’t know what “it” was yet.

 

\---

 

Among other things, Odin had become hyperaware of the clutter around the household, due to its quick disappearance after Ava’s arrival. She was quite fast at organizing things, and had even offered to grapple the atrocity that was Olai’s office. Boxes of client files and papers had nested over nearly the entire floor space, leaving only an obnoxious path to navigate and trip over—but even that had disappeared after a few days.

Odin was embarrassed at how helpful Ava was being. Not embarrassed _for_ her—embarrassed because of how worn the house had become over the last few years, and how much cleaning it _had_ needed. And embarrassed moreover, because the girls were getting too comfortable with the new arrangement.

Such thoughts were relit in the forefront of his mind as he glanced into the girls’ room as he passed by. He scowled, turning around and followed noise into the kitchen to locate the twins.

“Y-you two need to clean your r-room.”

Crow didn’t bother looking up. “Why? Ava will do it.”

Odin’s mood was worsening by the second, and he had a feeling the continued conversation would not remedy that fact. “Ava is n-not a maid,” he growled.

“If she’s not a prostitute, and she’s not a maid, then what is she?”

Odin snarled as an entire set of tensions was rung. “D-do y-you _want_ to stay at Merida’s th-this weekend? B-b-because it really doesn’t s-sound like you do.”

That got their attention, their voices snapping in indignation.

“That’s not fair!”

“You said we’re only grounded if we’re rude.”

“Wh-what the hell d-do think y-you’re being r-right now?!”

Raven scoffed. “It’s only _rude_ if she can hear us.”

“Besides, you never answered us. Why _is_ she here?”

“All she does is clean.”

God dammit, it was impossible to get a word in when the two of them went off in unison. Odin was about to continue at them with viciousness, but there was a voice from the other across the house.

“Odin, I need you in the office.” Olai yelled, muffled through several walls.

Odin exhaled sharply, turning his head back and giving a last look of sourness to the twins.

“K-keep your mouths shut, or at l-least keep them to yourselves.”

Crow and Raven gave his back the customary glares as he walked away from them, returning to conversation quietly. Odin made his way through the hall to the office, poking in to find his older brother with his feet on the desk, grinning like an idiot.

“Look at how much leg space I have now, eh?” he said, bobbing his legs to enunciate the point. “Ava did a fantastic job. I didn’t even expect it to be this clean—look, she even labeled shit so we can find papers easier!” He put his hands behind his head. “We should get her to clean the basement.”

 _God fucking dammit Christ on a bike,_ _why couldn’t anyone treat Ava like she was a guest?!_

Glowering at Olai, Odin said impatiently “Is th-that all you brought me in here f-for?”

Olai made a quick gesture with his finger and pulled his feet off the table. “It is not.” He opened a drawer, withdrew a file, and tossed it on the desk top towards Odin. “I need you to go back into the city this weekend.”

Odin recoiled, brow plummeting and hands thrown up in annoyance. “Wh—a-are you s-s-serious?!”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“ _Why?_ A-and why can’t y-you do it?”

“Nanezgani wants to renegotiate the terms of our contract. And it would be better if we sent the same person as last time—keep things consistent, build a bond of trust.”

Build a bond, his ass. Pedri Nanezgani was a piece of shit, and Odin would’ve rather shot himself in the foot than try and finish a deal with him again. A bullet would have been less painful.

“It t-took him two f-fucking weeks to decide t-to rethink the agreement?”

Olai shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. It’s _your_ job to make sure this doesn’t fall through. And hey, it’s not like I’m gonna be sitting on my ass all weekend—Magpie has a hospital visit.”

Odin groaned and lolled his head back. But after a second, a disturbing thought occurred to him, and brought his eyes back to attention. If Crow and Raven stayed at Merida’s, and Olai took Magpie to the hospital, then that meant—

“It’s j-j-just g-going to be A-Ava at the h-house? Al-alone?”

Olai served him a strange look. “…Yes? Why?”

Odin could feel himself start to sweat. Ava _should not_ be by herself, not so soon again, not until she was more comfortable, not until the night they met was further from thought.

“I… I r-really don’t th-think… I m-mean, th-that’s not a g-g-good idea… I d-don’t w-want to leave her al-a-alone—“

A glare from across the desk broke up Odin’s words even further. “What do you think she’s going to do? Clean the house _too_ much?”

If he just told him everything, if Olai knew what had happened, it would have been an easier case to argue. But that wasn’t his story to tell.

“Sh-she just g-got here, w-we shouldn’t l-leave her b-b-by herself, it’s r-rude—” His stutter was getting worse by the second.

“She knows the house, she can get around.”

“B-But—”

Suddenly Olai’s face split into a grin. “I know what this is,” he said. He hoisted himself out of his chair, chuckling, and stuck a finger at Odin’s chest. “No, no, you’ll have time to get laid after this weekend. Ava will still be here for you when you get back.”

He sauntered past and to the doorway. “I mean, you’re lucky I _am_ leaving this weekend. If it was just me and her, then maybe she _wouldn’t_ be waiting for you when you get back.”

Olai was cackling through his teeth as he departed, and Odin was fuming. His face was flushed and the images of what his brother suggested had plucked every nerve in his stomach and spine. He stared down at his feet, failingly trying to reign in his anxiety.

Ava was still a stranger to him and this whole house.

She was still fighting her own fights, ones that Odin had no insight in, but he had almost witnessed the end of them _only two weeks ago_ , and that scared him.

Ava was two weeks past walking out of her old life, and now Odin was just going to leave her here. It was like knowing the most intimate secrets of a complete stranger, and nothing else about them, and having to build from there. And leaving her in a strange place was certainly asking for problems.

Odin took a deep breath.

She’d been here for two weeks. She knew her way around the house.

He was only going to be gone for three days. Olai and Magpie might return early, depending on how well the appointment went.

She had a phone, she could call him if she needed.

This was… good. This was good. She could figure herself out without interruption. It didn’t feel good, though.

But first, he needed to find her.

\---

 

Ava shifted her legs underneath her thighs, feet already going static with lacking blood flow, laying a shirt over her legs and folding it. It was Olai’s—probably. It had been two weeks, and she had a fair handle on what who was wearing what, since she had barely left the vicinity of the house. It certainly made sorting laundry easier. But the two brothers still dressed fairly similarly, she was prone to making an error at least once or twice in a pile. Though they had never complained about it to her.

She was sitting on her bed, an island among the empty attic space. It was the only mass that occupied area in the bedroom, uncomfortably isolated and commanding attention in a room that had nothing else to give attention to. The two laundry baskets were a nice distraction, filled with fabrics that proved the existence of other life in the household.

Ava stacked a shirt and then rubbed her eyes. They felt blurry.

There was a knock on the door, and her body felt a jolt of surprise.“Come in.” she said. It cracked open a little, and Odin poked his head through, before stepping all the way in, looking suddenly agitated.

“H-hey—you r-r-really d-don’t need to do th-t-this.” He said, gesturing towards the laundry. “We c-can to d-do it, y-you’re the g-guest—“

“It’s fine,” she mumbled. She looked back down and kept working.

_Please go away._

“N-no, _re-really_ , you sh-shouldn’t have to.”

She did not stop, but her chest was getting heavy. “I’m not gonna freeload off of your family.”

 _Please leave me alone._ ( _…Did_ she want to be alone? She didn’t know.)

Ava could hear him scuffing his feet on the ground, before softly saying, “At l-least l-let me help you.”

She looked up at him. The request was genuine, and for that, she made a tiny movement at the further basket. He sat down on the bed and reached for a shirt, following her lead.

It would have been okay, but Ava wasn’t done yet. “Laundry isn’t why you came up here.”

“…N-no…”

He was stalling, or nervous, maybe. “Then why?”

“…I-I… I, uh, I h-have to g-g-go into the city this w-we-weekend… and the g-girls and O-Olai w-w-will be gone… a-and y-you’ll be here, um, al-a-alone.”

Ava stopped working, staring down at the half folded dress in her fingers. Alone. There was a stone of tension in her gut that started pressing up against her lungs.

 

\---

 

He’d stopped to watch her, to gauge her reaction, and her expression stilled and collapsed in the smallest way, and it was agonizing to obverse, because he had been waiting for it. It was the reaction he had expected, but it was still disturbing for how much he had hoped against it. Odin panicked.

“If yo-you w-want, you c-can come with m-me, s-so you’re n-not—“

_“No!”_

He jumped back. Ava’s head had been thrown up, eyes glittering, and fingers clutched. This reaction was fiercer, sharper, but also… hurt. She was staring at him, trying to relay that to him, and Odin wanted to back down, to avoid her wrath—but this wasn’t wrath. This was fear. The force of the recoil was telling of what should have been obvious: whatever Ava had left behind was going to stay there. 

He felt like a fool. The suggestion had been automatic, but the point of all this had been for her to _leave_ the city. She couldn’t go back into it.

The urge came back then, to hold onto her, to talk to her, to do _something_ for her. But while an interruption never came this time, Odin knew this wasn’t the moment to act upon that instinct. Her single word was enough to cull the possibility before it presented itself.

Ava dropped her eyes. “No,” she repeated, softly, recovering for the force of her first response. Was she embarrassed? She shouldn’t have been. Odin bit his bottom lip.

“R-right, then. I’ll… I-I’ll g-give you my—I me-mean, you have m-my number, right? In c-case you… n-need… anyth-thing…” he trailed off. She glanced at him strangely, and Odin’s face was flushed. Nonetheless, she nodded.

"I’ll be fine. I know how to be by myself.”

Those reassurances made him feel worse.

 

\---

 

Friday morning came around and Ava watched from the side as Odin dragged his feet as long as he could. He was stalling, and he looked absolutely miserable. Ava refused the idea that his distress was completely out of concern for her. It didn’t matter how much pity he had in his heart—she was stranger to him, and even if she hadn’t been, her pathetic form would never elicit that kind of concern.

Odin’s stalling survived an impressive lifespan, until nearly nine in the morning, when Olai threatened to maim him if “you pussyfoot around for another goddamn second”.

The twins had already been dropped off for school—they’d go to Merida’s straight after. Olai and Magpie left shortly after the confrontation, the elder brother shouting behind him that he was going to call the house in thirty minutes, and if Odin hadn’t left yet, he was going to turn the car around, come back and “put a foot so far up your ass that Magpie won’t be the only one going to the hospital.”

Ava did not particularly care for Olai.

After a final string of curses and glares, the eldest and littlest Arrow had departed and it was only Ava and Odin left in the house.

They were in the living room, looking on to the foyer and front door. The light from outside was greying the walls, and stilled the breathing air. Odin was going to have to leave soon. He was pacing and digging through his bags, even stepping away for a smoke, and by now Ava was confused as to what was going on. He had been concerned about leaving her alone, but he was outright pale and shaky. The young man kept avoided looking at her head on, but Ava knew when people were staring at her when she turned away.

She had offered to help him assemble the needed files and baggage, but there wasn’t much to do anymore. They were standing next to each other, looking down at the briefcase and Odin’s luggage, unsure of what to do, as if waiting to remember what they’d forgotten to pack.

Then, finally, they were walking out to the car (the front bumper newly repaired), and they tucked the things into the back seat, neatly against one another, leaving the two of them, the keys dangling from Odin’s fingers, Ava’s feet bare.

Ava looked at their reflection in the window of the car. It was strange seeing them like that, like looking in on someone else’s moment. She ignored herself. She watched Odin’s reflection, his jacket collar pulled up around his neck, dark eyes downcast to his feet.

And then she watched his reflection move, and he did something very unexpected. He dropped down and put his arms around her and held onto her. The moment he touched her, her mind was bumped back into her own moment, away from her reflections. Her mouth was buried against his shoulder, and Ava felt his cheek brush hers, his stubble prickling her skin. Odin was holding onto her tightly, wrapping her up. Her eyes were still open in surprise, but her hands had automatically slid around to his shoulder blades, and they stayed like that. It was warm. Ava felt her throat start inexplicably going strung, but he then pulled away, and it went even tighter.

He straightened up, and looked down at her, looking over her face, and finally said softly, securely,

“I w-will c-come back.”

           

 

Ava stood in driveway and watched the car pull away, past the tress, and slip from sight. The teeth of the gravel pocked into her bare feet. The house waited behind her. She was alone again.

She went inside and the door locked behind her.

Ava slid her hand along the banister up to the second floor, floating forward to the narrow staircase of the attic, listening to the of boards groaning underfoot, to each their own sound like piano keys. She reached the top landing and stepped through to the room, the door swinging shut.

She hadn’t used her phone at all. Odin had given her his number the first few days, but she had not yet transferred it from a small scrap of paper she’d written it on. Ava couldn’t remember if she’d even touched her phone since she’d been at Maggie’s. She walked over to her suitcase, resting against the wall, and unlatched it. She hadn’t bothered to take her clothes out and store them elsewhere. After a minute of rustling, the phone was uncovered in a small pouch sewn into the forest green interior of the suitcase. Two weeks of neglect had killed all charge in the device. Another moment of searching, and the charger was retrieved. She plugged it into the wall, locating one of the outlets that had added to the room long after it was originally built, the plastic paling but still new compared to the architecture it was nested in.

She sat up against the wall, legs out, and waited for it buzz back to life, examining the number Odin had written her, thumbing the paper edges. Ava wondered what calls would be waiting for her once the screen came back on. Maybe Maggie would have messaged some thorny inquiry about her whereabouts. More likely, she would have messaged looking for an apology from Ava. Maybe not. But maybe Wrathia would have sent something, after  all this time looking once again for a entertainment outlet in Ava’s complacency. Maybe someone else entirely would have come looking for her.

The phone whirred in anticipation of life, quivering against the floorboard. Ava looked down and watched it light up.

 

\---

 

If she had been smart, she wouldn’t have been so diligent about cleaning immediately after arrival. But then again, she hadn’t known that there would be a lack of people to clean up after this weekend until the day before. If she’d known, she’d have waited.

And for that, by Friday evening there was nothing left for her to organize. There was no dinner that occurred and therefore no dishes. Ava did not eat that night. She realized that it was around that time at night, but ignored that revelation and pretended to forget. She had no appetite, but she wish she had, so that she might have something to clean and to do. It would have been a process to wear time off the day.

She had already organized most of the house, and the office. She wandered into the basement sometime around noon, and went to work, despite Odin’s previous adamant request that she not bother with it. But the basement was just deceptively unorganized. Ava wasn’t about to throw anything out without consent of the Arrows, but rearranging clutter and boxes took less time than she had anticipated. She cleared a path and moved the furniture that she could on her own. By five o’clock there wasn’t anything left to finish. The house was empty of inhabitants, and by nightfall, required no further upkeep.

Ava sat down on the living room couch and tried to think of what to do next.

There was absolutely nothing in front of her to stall. There was nothing stopping her from doing what she wanted. She had all the time and resources.

She should look for a job. She should look for her own place.

She should go out, maybe get a walk.

She should call someone.

Ava sat on the couch.

           

\---

 

The dreams continued. The sleep had not.

 

Sometimes the scene played out more than once a night, sometimes it happened over and over right after itself.

Sometimes it played out correctly and mirrored what had actually happened. She would get hit and then it would end.

Sometimes the car didn’t stop when it hit her.

Sometimes there were more than one car, and they just kept coming.

Sometimes she would get hit and her body would never hit the ground.

Sometimes she was driving.

When that happened, she always watched as the car hit her outside the glass. It happened slowly, she would see herself enter the highlights. Sometimes there was panic. But mostly she kept her foot off the break pedal.

 

\---

 

What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she do anything? Didn’t she want to do things? Wasn’t there a whole list of things that she had wanted? Why couldn’t she get off the couch? Why was she so lazy? Did she think she was going to get any of it by sitting and doing nothing? Why did she cry so much? Did good people cry this much? Did anyone notice she had left? Why hadn’t anyone come looking for her? Was she worth anything to anyone? Why did she want people to leave her alone? Why was she lonely? Why couldn’t she do anything? Why was she so tired? Why couldn’t she sleep? Why did she look like that? Why did she feel so angry? Where was she going after all this? Would anyone notice if she left? Why did she come here? What difference did it make to anyone? Why was she crying? Why

 

\---

 

The dreams became their worst when the car never came.

She’d be walking, and she knew it was coming, she knew she wouldn’t make it to the other side, but then as she got closer and closer to the edge, she wondered where the car was. She knew, someone was coming for her, something was going to stop her. She wouldn’t make it to the other side, and as she neared the edge, she would begin to panic, but was unable to stop moving. And then she’d be get on the edge and walk off, still waiting for the car as she fell.

The first time that had happened in her dream, Ava woke up, rolled over, and cried and screamed into the mattress until it hurt to breathe.

And by the end of the second week, as everyone was leaving for the weekend, that was the only dream she was having. Each time it occurred she woke up, just barely catching and clipping the scream before it flew from her mouth, even though there was no one left in the house to wake up. She would stare up at the canopy and force herself to follow the lattice pattern so her mind would have something else to concern itself with, other than the tears sliding into her ears, leaving the cartilage sodden with droplets, hot and clammy, and other than the high whine emitting from throat and the paralyzing shakes that started at her chest.

 

\---

 

After jolting back into consciousness for a fourth time that night, she stopped closing her eyes altogether. Ava didn’t know what time it was. She’d put the phone back in the suitcase and tried not to think about it. Her stomach hurt. She rolled over, back and forth, looking down at either wall and tangling the sheet underneath her. Her arms had slipped out from under the blankets, bumps filing up along her skin from the cold air, and red hair was tangled and stuck stanchly against her neck.

Finally a spinning sensation in her chest and throat made it too much, and she sat up straight. Looking up, black spots covered the corners from sitting up too fast, but then she caught a glimpse of movement—her own. She looked at the vanity and towards the mirror.

It scared her a little, because it felt like something else was watching her from across the room. It was intensely dark still; her eyes had adjusted, but out in the woods, so far away from the city, there wasn’t much light pollution. Ava laid back down and pushed the side of her face down into the mattress, ignoring the feeling that she was being watched. It was a stupid feeling, since she knew it was just her own reflection, and it was just something-AM in the morning and she was withered from lack of sleep, but it persisted. She pulled a blanket around her face and tucked her legs in, and finally squeezed her eyes shut, but the paranoia grew. There was a pulling sensation along her spine that made her want to flail her limbs, to hit something, to get rid of the feeling, and finally she lifted back up in a fury.

She scooted over from the center of the bed and hopped off, casting off the entanglement of linen. Turning, she threw the top layers back, leaving only one sheet, which she latched onto and yanked. Ava ripped it from its tucks in the mattress, and hardly let it hit her legs before she walked over to the vanity.

The light was better now, closer to the window, and she could see the reflection properly. The white sheet clutched in her fingers, hanging below her waist and catching over feet, Ava stared at the mirror. There was a desire to shatter in, the same desire there had been sitting in her room years before, waiting for Wrathia to come back, but this wasn’t her mirror anymore. Breaking it would only satisfy a momentary need for adrenaline.

Her chest was clenched. Ava lifted her arms and threw the sheet over the vanity, until none of the mirror, or the bowed wooden legs, or pockets of drawers, or her reflection could be could be seen anymore.


	4. Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you would like to cry while reading this, I highly suggest listening to music box versions of Studio Ghibli soundtracks, because that's what I did while writing this, and boy, was that a bad decision.
> 
> I may come back to this and add a little, but I'll let you know if I do.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy this chapter. Thank you for all your kind words. Please let me know what you like or dislike in the tags or comments.

“S-so they think sh-she’s improving?”

_"S’what they seemed to think.”_

"Th-That’s…gr- _great._ Does Magpie kn-know—I m-mean, did they—”

_“Yeah, she knows. She’s with the doc’ right now, finishing up the examination, or whatever the hell.”_

“C-can I talk with her?”

_“She’s not out yet. I’ll call back once she is, if you want to wait.”_

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d b-be great.”

He hung up. Odin scratched the back of his head, and absently looked around the hotel room, eyes resting momentarily on the television and the faces of the reporters, currently muted. He sat on the edge of the bed, as he hadn’t wanted to be lying down when Olai called from the hospital. Too relaxed, he thought. And he didn’t want to fall asleep on accident, in case something had happened to Magpie. Sleep sounded awfully appealing, though, with the curtains drawn after a long night of terrible work, and the promise of a long day of terrible work to follow. Two days was too long a time to be spending on bullshit clients. Odin rubbed his eyes and looked back up at the television.

They were running some news story about a shooting, which they seemed to indicate was the result of gang violence. He didn’t really want to keep watching, but sitting without any motion at all in a dumpy hotel room wasn’t appealing either. Odin didn’t like being away from home. Things went wrong in unfamiliar territory. The longer he was away from his own grounds, the more and more liable he was to encountering problems, which was exactly what had happened last time.

…Right?

The work had been frustrating, and long, and it had been rainy, and he’d hit Ava with a car, and he found out she was going to—

Odin turned the volume back on, high.

He didn’t want to think about it. Not because he didn’t care, or wanted to ignore it in the hopes it would disappear. He didn’t want to think about it because it was horrific and it would remind him that Ava was by herself back home. He didn’t want to think about it, because it made him think about her, and the more that happened, the more uneasy he felt about leaving her alone.

Ava was probably doing just fine and figuring things out for herself. Just like she’d said she wanted. He was overacting and she was fine.

The news anchors voice became grating, and the TV was switched off entirely with a groan. Odin felt himself drifting after a few minutes. He knew he was falling asleep but did nothing to stop it. As his vision swayed, the phone next to him beeped, and he was buzzed back into attention. He brought it next to his ear.

“Hello?”

_“Hi, Odin.”_

He smiled automatically. “H-hi, lovey, how are y-you doing?”

_“Mmm.”_

“J-just ‘mmm’, huh?”

" _I want to go home.”_

He let himself lay down, knowing Magpie’s voice was going to keep him up. “I kn-know. You’ll be le-leaving soon.”

_“Can you read to me?”_

“Ah, I’m s-sorry, lovey, I’m n-not at home either, I don’t ha-have any books with me.”

" _Are you at a hotel?”_

“Yeah.”

_“…Is there a menu?”_

Odin laughed. “Do you want me order y-you some food?”

_“…You can read me the menu. ‘Stead of a book.”_

He laughed even harder, a smile splitting his lips. “D’you w-want me to read the phone book af-afterw-wards?”

Magpie giggled on the other side of the line, one of Odin’s favorite sounds. _“No, that’d be boring, just numbers.”_

 _"_ A m-menu is just food.”

" _Food is good.”_

“Th-that is true. But I don’t think the food at th-this hotel would be very good.”

The giggling continued for a second, but then there was silence, with sporadic, distant talking, as if the phone had been put down. After a moment, Magpie returned.

_“Umm… Olai wants to talk to you again.”_

Odin grimaced. He wished to stay with her, but didn’t let his voice show so. “Okay. Y-you should probably g-go t-t-to bed soon, anyway. It’s l-late.”

" _’K. I love you, Odin._

“I l-love you, too, Magpie.”

As promised, Olai’s voice came on.

_“Hey.”_

“Wh-what do you need?”

" _We have to stay here for another day or so. Magpie’s going back to review with them now—they want to run some more tests.”_

Odin’s stomach sank at the words. More testing only meant bad things. “What? Wh-why? I-I-I thought they said sh-she was impr-proving.”

" _Yes, yeah, they think so. But they just want to be sure. They just want more confirmation, for our sake and theirs.”_

Odin swallowed, and ran a hand over hand over his eyes.

_“Hey, are you still there?”_

“Y-yeah… Yeah, that’s fine. Whatever th-they think is best.”

" _I’ll call back tomorrow.”_

By instinct, fatigue was letting the phone nearly slip away from him, but a thought occurred to him, and his mouth opened before he could stop it.

“H-hey, Olai, wait, um, have y-you…” he said quickly, biting his lip.

_“What?”_

“…Have you h-heard from Ava? H-has she c-called from the h-h-house?”

_“Oh, Jesus Christ, are you on this again?!”_

_"_ Sh-she hasn’t called, is all—I haven’t h-heard fr-from her—“

" _Yeah, because she doesn’t need anything from you, dumbass. I’m sorry, but what the hell do you think is wrong?”_

This was bad. “Look, I’m j-j-just worried ab-about leaving her alone—“

_“You keep saying that! Why?! What happened, Odin?”_

He should have said right then _exactly_ what had happened, almost happened to Ava, to get his brother to stop dismissing it, but the barrage rendered him incapable of forming a response quickly enough. Olai continued on his tirade, but anger started to stack itself in his stomach.

_“Why the hell did you bring her back with you if you were just gonna get yourself worked up over it? If you’re trying to get in her pants, you’re doing a shit job. It generally works better if you don’t piss yourself at the thought of talking to—!”_

"Fuck off, Olai.”

The way the words were spit, so crisply and for once without stumble, through the pure acid that had pushed up his gut, they brought the conversation swiftly to its knees. Odin hung up and tossed the phone on the table beside the bed, howling through clenched teeth. It was always like this with the two of them. He couldn’t remember the last time a conversation had ended with an actual good-bye. Odin supposed that at some point Olai had stopped meaning it, and had stopped saying it altogether. Why waste the oxygen on what had become a formality?

Despite constant denial that Ava was here as a trophy, the older brother hadn’t let the idea go. And surely, after this exchange, bad things were to follow. Olai liked getting the last word in, and robbing him of the opportunity guaranteed that he would compensate for it elsewhere. As long as the elder didn’t approach Ava about it, the accusation could be handled—angrily, but better to be annoyed, than to be scared of what he might say to her.

Odin glared at the ceiling and listened to the air sputter on through the vents.

He still didn’t know what was going on with Ava.

But tomorrow was Sunday, and come hell or high water, he was going to go home. He’d see her in a day.

Several minutes passed, his fingers inching towards his phone, fighting against the common sense that said it would be weird to call her, to check up on her. She wasn’t a child. He was going to sound like a patronizing creep. And besides, it was late to call. She might be asleep.

She was _fine._

_But what if she wasn’t?_

The battle between logic and anxiety-based reasoning concluded when he grabbed his phone and scrolled through the contacts, face pushed against the mattress. He looked at Ava Ire’s name, and pressed call.

The phone rang five times. No response.

He wasn’t going to leave a message; that would undoubtedly come off as clingy, given he initiated the call. Odin rolled over and tried to go to sleep. Forget today. He was done with it.

Five minutes of absolute stillness—he did not fidget or roll over or open his eyes—and he called again. Five rings. No answer. No message left.

Fifteen minutes later, Odin picked up the phone, listened to the rings, and left a message.

 

\---

 

By some brutal play of God’s hand, Odin did not start his venture home until 6:30 at night, the day already muted by autumn darkness. Any other time, he would have waited until Monday morning to start back, since driving at night, tired, was an open opportunity for something to go wrong. And through some cruel, ironic twist, it had begun raining again. Though it had rained on and off over the two weeks, as was common to the region, it held less weight when they were home. Home was safe.

Night had come and passed, and come again, but Ava had not returned his calls. The rain had come back with promise of persistence. He avoided the bridge.

 

\---

 

It was raining again. Ava was cold, but she had not gone back up to the third floor since the first night, and would not go back to get blankets. She wrapped herself in the quilt from the living room, and held her face between her knees, her whole body feeling shivers that swept over the lines on her arms.

Night had already fallen; no one was coming back today. She could fix everything tomorrow.

 

\---

 

“F-fuck me,” Odin muttered, slamming the door to the car and sluggishly pushing his bag onto his shoulder. There wasn’t a single fiber in his body that didn’t scream for sleep, and the rain plucking against his jacket and hood just made him angrier. He couldn’t bring himself to walk fast and get to a dry place. Fatigue was channeled into irritation; Odin wanted to be in his bed and unconscious forever, but he was too fucking tired to move that far, that fast.

The return trip had delivered him to the front steps far later than it should have. He hadn’t had a smoke in six hours. Odin fished the keys out of his pocket and shoved it into the door. He pushed through the doorway, and nearly slammed it behind him before realizing that there were no lights on whatsoever in the house. Ava must have been asleep. The door was shut silently.

The smell of home was overwhelming, and Odin trundled through the kitchen and into the living room, shedding his wet jacket on the ground, though almost all of his clothes were sodden with rain. In a final grandiose movement, he shrugged his heavy bag into the crook of his arm, and tossed it in an weighty arc onto the couch as he moved towards the stairs, rubbing his face.

Suddenly, there was a wounded cry behind him as the luggage landed, and Odin’s knees nearly gave out as electric fear snapped through his skin, shouting “ _Fuck_!” as a reaction.

He stuffed the breath back into his lungs, and focused on the couch, where a small black figure was sitting up, making a distressed noise.

“A-Ava?” he whispered, hesitantly. She sniffed, almost inaudibly.

His heart was clapping against his ribs, and he quickly made his way around the sofa. “Ava, oh G-God, I-I’m—I’m s-s-so s-sorry. I d-didn’t realize you w-were…” Odin crouched down in front of her, kicking the bag away from them. He still couldn’t make out her features in the darkness, but it seemed her hand was over her face.

“Are y-y-you okay?”

“…My nose is bleeding,” she said, with a sliver of a crack in her voice, making  Odin’s heart hurt terribly.

“L-Let’s g-get to the bathroom.”

Odin grabbed her hand and slowly led her over to the washroom, matching her speed, avoiding any furniture. Once inside, he helped her up onto the counter gently, and groped about for the light switch, avoiding the overhead and settling on the switch for the shower.

The light ticked on, Ava squeezed her eyes shut at the brightness, and Odin’s was thankful that she could not see his reaction, or hear his stomach drop, because now that he could see her, the spot of blood on her face and hand was the least disconcerting thing about her appearance.

Her eyes were sunken and smeared with purple-black rings. Her hair was tangled and hung over her face, which itself looked gaunt and pale. Hell, she looked the same as she did in the hospital—maybe worse, if less wet. She was a corpse.

 

\---

 

Ava waited until the pricks of tears, summoned by the sudden brightness, swelled back down before starting to open her eyes.

Through the nettles of her eyelashes, she could see Odin’s chest, long-sleeved grey shirt smattered with raindrops. Blinking, she looked up, to see his face crestfallen, studying hers. Her eyes dropped, and she shifted the hand that was stopping the run of blood from her nostril. After the moment of impact, it had stopped hurting, and the bleed felt as if it were trickling off, but she didn’t say any of that in the moment as he put his hands on either side of her face and held it for a moment. As she leaned into his palm ever so slightly, it pulled away to retrieve a towel, and he pressed it gently under her nose, shooing away her protest.

“No, no—that’s one of the nice towels—don’t get it ruined—“

“It’s f-fine, we can cl-clean it.”

Odin chuckled. “L-Lecturing me about my own l-linen. You really h-have taken over the laundry.”

Ava felt warmth pool over her face, and she glanced up at him before fixating on his chest again. For a few minutes, they sat there in quiet, listening to the rain and thunder and feeling each other’s company. Odin dampened the cloth and brought it back up, wiping away the last of the red stains. His eyes were flicking up and down her body.

“You look t-t-tired,” he murmured. Ava didn’t like where this was going.

“So do you,” she offered back, which was the truth; he had bags under his eyes—eyes that were filling with even more concern.

“I’m s- _serious_ , Ava.”

Ava looked to the side and didn’t respond. If she hopped off the counter and walked away, he’d probably drop the subject. But she liked having him in front of her. She just wanted the quiet again.

“…When w-was the last time y-you ate?”

There was sweat collecting on her back. Ava swallowed. “I’m not hungry,” she said shakily.

“Th-That’s not…” Odin pursed his lips, as if contemplating his next move. She kept her eyes away from his. Finally, he spoke up again.

“Okay. Well… is it t-too cold in the a-at-attic? Is th-that why you were sleeping down h-here? I’ll fix the h-heating—”

Ava shook her head. “I just couldn’t sleep.” That wasn’t completely a lie. A part of her felt badly, because he was trying, really trying, to figure things out, but the rest of her was okay with letting him think in silence. No one wanted to figure her out.

After another lull, before he could speak, she said quickly, “We should probably go to bed. It’s late.”

“Not covered i-in blood.”

She furrowed her brow and looked down. Indeed, in all of the darkness and movement, she hadn’t noticed blood dropping down to her nightshirt.

“Oh… No, it’s fine. It’s just a few drops. I’ll clean it tomorrow.”

“You d-don’t have other pajama tops? You can b-borrow one of my sweatshirts.”

“No, seriously, you don’t—“

Odin snorted. “Don’t think for a s-second I’m going to let a guest sleep in their own b-bl-blood.”

A smile poked from of the corner of her lips, and she gave him a sly look. “What about someone else’s blood?”

“That I’d be okay with.”

Ava giggled, and his face lit up and he laughed a little, too. It was such a nice visual, watching violet eyes shine like that. The bubbling noise that escaped her throat surprised her; it didn’t happen that often anymore. She swung her legs a little, and he sat down on the edge of the bathtub.

“Why don’t you take a sh-s-shower? I’ll get you a h-hoodie, w-while you’re cleaning off.”

           

\---

 

Ava had her legs pulled up onto the couch, her arms wrapped around them as she pushed her nose into her knees, into the boy’s sweatshirt that was two times too large on her. While a lot of things smelled like pine trees in this house, given the woodland location, the clothing item had cologne and smoke mixed into it as well. It reminded Ava of when he’d hugged her. She was glad it was dark, because her face was flushed.

Her hair was still slightly damp, lying over the cushion behind her, but she had rid most of the water from it in the bathroom, rubbing it as dry possible before admitting that she had no choice but to leave the bathroom. Despite her hoping, Odin hadn’t fallen asleep waiting for her to finish.

Odin, who had been changing into his own nightwear, was walking back down the stairs, the chirping steps announcing his arrival behind her. He walked around to the front of couch, sitting down gently on the opposite end.

"How are your br-bruises? Do they still hurt?”

“No. They’re gone now.”

“Do you n-need anything else?”

“No, thanks.”

He looked down at his knees and cleared his throat.

“I g-guess I’ll see you in the mo-m-morning,” he said softly.

 Ava squeezed her eyes shut as he started to stand up again. Her mouth started to talk.

           

\---

 

“Hey, Odin?”

Her voice was feather light, and he stopped cold.

“Y-yeah?”

“Do you…” He could hear her pull in a tiny breath.

“…Do you think a person can disappear?”

           

After all this time, with him hoping for this conversation to take place, Odin suddenly felt scared to move forward. This is what he had wanted, wasn’t it? For her to work through what she was feeling, for him to finish their conversation. But now as she invited him to have this moment, he wasn’t sure he knew how to say, knew _what_ to say what she needed to hear. He wasn’t her hero. He wasn’t anyone’s.

 

Odin swallowed hard, and lightly sat back down. “What d-do you m-mean?”

Ava curled further into herself. “I mean… do you think that it’s possible that… someone could go missing, and… no one would know. If they meant so little to everyone, and they didn’t affect anyone, they could disappear. They could be gone and no one would even realize.”

His chest hurt so badly. He shifted his legs to point his body towards her own. “W-well… a person al-a-always has some affect, I think. They’re s-someone’s child…someone’s f-family…someone’s f-f-friend. Th-they’re… s- _someone.”_

“But if I—if they didn’t. If no one noticed they were gone, then it was like they were never there in the first place.” She was whispering now. “And… it’s kind of like they never existed.”

“Y-you still exist. Even i-if everyone around you c-can’t see. You st-still love, an-and feel, and dream f-for things. Th-those things are real. They’re w-w-worth something, who y-you are.”

Ava turned her head to look at him, and there was already a glittering sheen over her eyes. “But you can’t exist by yourself, can you…? …Why would you? If no one cares that about what you love… What would be the point of feeling and dreaming and, and, _living_ if there isn’t another person who can see you, or share with you? You aren’t worth anything if you can’t confirm that what makes up who you are, what you feel, is _worth loving_!”

Her voice was split in two now, and rising. “Why would you exist if no one would ever know? You aren’t enough! Your own self isn’t enough to validate living… How could just keep going, knowing that there isn’t a single person that knows you’re there, or wants to hear about what you love? Knowing that the only reason you exist is because you are aware of yourself? That the moment you die—there won’t be anything left to show you existed? That you mattered… at… at all…”

Hot tears were bubbling over the tangles of her eyelashes, and barbs were clenching her throat and slicing up the air she was struggling to take in. Odin was trying not to mirror her, with just a few drops escaping to the corners of his eyes. Her hands were clenched into the edge of the sweatshirt, shaking.

“I’m going to disappear.”

Odin’s blood was throbbing against his ribs, and he grabbed her hand. “N-no! No, y-you’re not—you’re n-not done living, y-you’ll find other pe-p-people who—“

“ _When?!”_ she shouted, brought to her feet. Her sadness was being harnessed by no mere rage. “How long do I have to wait? Why do I… have to? I keep waiting and waiting and _waiting_ and nothing changes—and it won’t…”

Odin was terrified at what he had done, and at what was going to happen to Ava. Her fists were balled, words and body alike shaking and broken by sobs.

“I, I, I left, and no one came looking for me. No one noticed. I was going to jump off a bridge and I’ve been gone for weeks and, and there isn’t a single person who knows, who noticed that I was gone. No one called looking for me after all this time; _they probably don’t even know I’m gone!”_ She pushed away from him. _“_ And don’t tell me _you_ could miss me! I—I don’t who you are! I don’t even know why you brought me here!”

“I-I, A-Ava—“

“I just—I don’t do anything! And one day I’ll leave and you’ll forget about me, too!” She grabbed the sides of her head. “And I hate this! I hate that I’m crying. I hate that this is going turn into a pity party for me! I can’t do anything! Why can’t I just stay angry instead of sad?!”

Ava was screaming against the thunder, against all the anger in the clouds, fighting out every god in the sky as a title force of pure wrath and sadness.

 _“_ If I’d jumped off that bridge, at least someone would have found my body! At least someone would have felt bad, at least people would know! But I came here instead… and… and now no one will know. If I had jumped—at least someone would find out—at least someone would care about who I was— _who I am!”_

\---

 

The last words pulled the steam from her lungs, and Ava was left heaving for her breaths, face dripping and burning with warmth. With her words finished, she focused on what was around her: quiet rain, and a silent young man staring at her.

In that moment, a thought crept up to her about how foolish she had just let herself be. She had been screaming out a boy who had been kind enough to bring her home and help her, calling him out as if he had anything do with what she was feeling, as if it were his fault. He got to bear all of that screaming, and anger, directed at him with no reason. She was living with him and his family, and relying on their generosity and she had just ripped herself open in front of him, trying to take it out on the only person around. There was no way she could stay here now—no way Odin would want her here after such a display of insanity.

Ava couldn’t tell if he looked confused, or scared, or angry, though there was a few tears in his eyes. She didn’t know from which emotion. It was because of her, though. They were complete strangers, one yelling at another. She was crazy, and she had just ruined the only stable relationship, however small, that she could hold onto.

Her voice was shaking violently, all the more pathetic without the brutal wrath she’d paired with it. The wrath was gone now, leaving her mouth and chest hollow.

 

\---

 

Odin could tell she wanted to say something, but it wasn’t coming out.

And now she was backing away from him and the couch, her mouth opening and closing, and she was stumbling away, too embarrassed to continue.

 

\---

 

Ava was numbly trying to walk her way to the staircase, the tears having run their course, when she heard a shift and rapidly approaching footsteps behind her. She kept her eyes on the stairs, in her mind focusing on the attic space, when Odin grabbed her shoulders and turned her around.

She didn’t see his face, and instead was greeted by his neck and shoulder, her mouth pressed against his collarbone as his arms slipped around her waist and back once more. Odin was crouched down, holding her like that, pressing his cheek against her head, and Ava was completely enveloped by the feeling. The tension in her throat returned, as it had the first time he’d hugged her, but this time she did nothing to remedy it.

After a second of hiccupping, she was all at once crying again, without any anger left to spare her the suffering feeling. Odin started rocking her a little, holding her up as her legs undid their strength in his arms. Ava sobbed, the noise throbbing against his now watery neck.

“I don’t want to disappear.”

“Y-you won’t. I c-can see you.”

The crying lasted, longer and longer, until Ava stopped trying to gauge when it would stop. She kept mumbling things into his shirt, until the rest of her body followed her mind, and she drifted away from consciousness, away from thunder, the soaking lace of her eyelashes fluttering against Odin’s neck, until the fluttering stopped, and she was collapsed against him.


	5. Remorse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A nice long chapter for an unfortunately long wait... School started again, and it really sucks. But your comments don't suck! Thank you for all of your kind messages; I read them all, over and over, and I apologize for not thanking or replying to everyone individually. Please continue to let me know how to improve, what you want to see more of! In the mean time, please enjoy the fifth installment.

The choked sobs and struggling breaths slid away, until Ava’s quivering ceased and her breathing became low and deep, her consciousness having slid away into his chest. Odin continued to rock her, the two of them now fallen to the floor, and Ava mostly in his lap. For a few more moments, he listened to the patter of rain on the outside world, and to her steady breathing, until all of the tension had left Ava’s body. The knotted clutch of her fingers had eased away into a weak curl, and he smoothed the rise in her shoulders with the palm of his hand, back and forth.

He wasn’t tired like he was before, sitting there with her. He’d stopped most of the emotion from coming out of himself. Ava needed to cry for her hurts, and it felt disrespectful for him to cry for something that he didn’t know anything about. Still, he had to run the corner of his sleeve over his eyes, before folding Ava back into his arms.

The conversation had been had. As he’d understood it from the rip of words that had come from her, Ava had gone to the bridge because there was no one who would care if she disappeared entirely from existence.

No one, including Ava herself.

As much as Odin would have like to have thought that impossible—that there must be _someone_ that cared, there must be worried thoughts given to all people—her words came crawling forward, one by one, phrase by sentence by thought, back to the forefront of his mind, and the shock that, in fact, _no one_ had come calling for her after all this time, confirming the worst of what Ava had already accepted about herself, settled in Odin’s stomach and began to rot.

The question now, of course, was of what he was going to do with all of this.

He hardly took notice as his teeth dug at his lips. Odin didn’t even know if he had done anything right—his choice of words had done nothing but thrown a match into already burning house. She’d cried herself out, curled against his chest, but who was to say it had done any help, other than prolonging the suffering to the next time she woke? Who was to say what _Ava_ would do with all of this? They are still strangers—

It was in that moment that it was Odin’s turn to get angry, and to realize how much he hated that phrase. _They were strangers_. It was something he’d told himself over and over, since the moment he’d hit her, a reassurance, that he could do no more with little information he had, that he could give no aid if her doors were not open, that the best he could do was look in from the outside.

What the fuck was wrong with him?

Why had he let this go on? He’d brought her home and then let her alone, let it all wait until it was unavoidable. Why hadn’t he gotten to know her? Why hadn’t he closed the gap between them, so that there was more between them than him hitting her with a fucking car, and him knowing that she planned to kill herself?

It was because he was a coward, who couldn’t bring himself to talk to her, or allow himself to see that nothing, not from the moment they’d met up, to now, had been okay for Ava.

Odin was so angry with himself in that moment that he forced himself to look down at Ava’s face in order to stop shaking, to remind himself that he couldn’t clench his fists, because right now they were cradling someone, and that he couldn’t scream out his frustration because she needed sleep far more than he needed to punish himself.

Even looking down at Ava, he couldn’t keep himself sitting much longer, and perhaps that was for the best. If they stayed like that any longer, he was liable to drift off himself, and the two of them would be laying propped up against the wall and floor for who knows how long.

Releasing a low breath, Odin shifted Ava slowly, moving her legs out from under her so as not to jolt her into wakefulness. Sliding one arm under her legs and the other around her torso, he pulled her up, and slowly rose himself, getting one knee under himself to push upwards. Finally standing, his stiff legs throwing static up his nerves, he looked again at Ava’s face for any signs that he’d disturbed her, but she seemed completely immersed in a spell of slumber, her small breaths pushing against his shoulder.

He trundled up the staircase, taking weighted, measured steps as he lifted her. As Odin reached the second floor, disappeared into blackness and silence, his mind began to wander, sleeplessness the likely cause, and he noticed how light her form was, and how warm she was against his chest. As he turned into the narrow steps leading into the attic, minding that her head not catch against the wall, a contentedness entered his chest at how nestled she was, and how nice it felt, to both be carrying Ava, and to be almost momentarily obscured from the rest of the world, with just the single task of making Ava comfortable and safe.

The cold hit him in his entirety before his feet reached the top stair.

Odin’s body steeled itself and he gripped Ava even tighter as he stepped into the room, his breath staggering in surprise. He had known that the heating up here had become picky over the years, and that the house was old, and hoarded cracks to the outside within the labyrinth of pipes between walls, but the attic seemed to completely repel the heat rising from the house beneath it, leaving it in a morbid chill, made only more biting by the collapse of autumn and the dead of night. He was shocked that his breath wasn’t visible, but even more disturbed that Ava had been staying up here. He wouldn’t have put her up here had he known, but he’d barely ever used this space, much less spent a night in it. The region they were in was known for it’s perpetual chill, but it was nearly October, and it would only get colder from here on out.

The cold, in its stark manner, brought to attention another alarm, in that the room was barren. It was the same as it had been when Ava arrived—the space appeared utterly unlived in, untouched. In two weeks, there appeared a lack whatsoever of evidence showing that someone had lived here, lacking any clothes or belongings scattered about

But then, he realized, something _was_ off; the vanity had been covered in a white sheet. The canopy bed had been made up in militaristic straightness, and there would have been nothing to indicate that it was missing a layer, unless one had pulled the covers back and checked—but there it was, draped hollowly over the only other furnishing in the room. Odin hadn’t even noticed at first. Between the freeze in the air and absence of any personal items, the covering had seemed normal, that it was only natural that it would be there, a sign of mourning and respect.

The mirror was covered in white, and the bed was laid out, waiting for someone.

Odin’s chest clenched, and his heart caught in his throat, threatening to burst in his pounding. He lay Ava down gently, but he was so scared to let it seem, even for a second, as if she was lying like the corpse she looked like, that he slowly, as not to wake her, but smoothly, leaned over her and pulled the blankets back, rumpling them as much as he could, before shifting her body underneath. She was curled up on her side, and he tucked the blankets around, pulling her hair away from her neck and splayed over the pillows.

Odin quickly took another trip downstairs to retrieve more blankets, ascending more rapidly than he had before. He laid each one over her, before stepping back, and taking a long look at her. Finally, he strode over to the vanity, and tugged the sheet free, revealing the reflective plain underneath it. The cloth lost its movement and rested, clinging against his legs. His didn’t wait to see his reflection before looking away.

For a moment, it all seemed okay. The atmosphere had changed. It felt safer now, with Ava in it, taken care of.

           

 

\---

  

The dream came back.

 

\--- 

 

Her eyelids drifted apart leisurely, pressed against the cool expanse of the pillow cradling her head. Ava was aware, slowly, of her senses. The skin around her eyes was sore and dry, making her want to rub them, but her arms were warm and weighted, burrowed in the extensive softness of the blankets on top of them, some of which she didn’t recognize. She reluctantly slid her hands out, elbows crackling from stiffness and sending satisfaction up her to her shoulders. In the small movement, her ankles and toes shifted from slumber onto a cold patch of the bed sheets where she hadn’t being laying dormant, the crisp coolness of the sensation making her happy. She rubbed her eyes as planned, but it did nothing to remedy the irritation under the sockets, left with the feeling that she had been crying extensively.

Which she had been.

The night former came gliding in with the cold air from behind the canopy curtains—Odin’s return, their run-in and conversation gone awry, and finally, her stomach dropping in recollection, her screaming fit. Ava’s lips wobbled and she rolled her face into fluff of the pillow, inhaling the white linen deeply, and exhaling shakily, watching the little tufts of feather-down poking out dance at the sudden current of air brought on by her breath.

 

Ava remembered sitting in her room and crying after the first time she’d hurt someone during one of her outbursts.

Ava could barely remember how she’d gotten into the confrontation, but she had been accidentally staring at Maggie and her new friends, all of whom were staring back at her and whispering. Maggie’s back was to her, but she was surely aware of Ava’s presence through the chatter. Suddenly, one of the girls was in front of her. Not Maggie, but a different girl, one she recognized but did not know. She had her hands on her hips and towered over Ava, as most everyone did before they knew to keep their distance.

Ava couldn’t recall the girl’s exact choice of words, because between the snickering going on around them, and the girl’s growing irritation, a dull ringing had started in her head to accompany the throbbing in her chest, and it grew until a siren was drilling against her eardrums from the inside out, and the heat of her breathing threatened to burst out of her chest. She could hear nothing.

The phrases “fucking stupid” and “need to leave” were thrown in there, maybe more than once, but the in order in which they had been said was unknown. She couldn’t keep herself calm enough to hear a full sentence before the pounding blotted out the start or finish of a phrase. That is, save for one.

“No one wants you.”

She’d heard that before.

Wrathia had told her that.

Like smoke, the girl disappeared, and in her place stood Wrathia herself, the words falling out of her mouth over and over, and Ava feeling herself being pushed farther into the ground. All the anger in her was pushed into a smaller and smaller space, until what had been self-loathing dispersed through her whole body had become a tiny circle, so tense and tight that she could not breathe.

And then, Ava felt her hand hit Wrathia’s face, hard.

It was in the next moment that Ava realized it was not Wrathia’s face, but the girl’s. There was yelling, and then there was crying.

           

Ava did not remember how she got home that day, but she sitting in her closet, the door shut, sobbing into her arms. Wrathia had not returned yet, but she had surely been informed of what had happened at school, and Ava could only hide until she came and dealt with her.

She didn’t know why she had hit that girl, she really didn’t. She hadn’t wanted to.

She had hurt one of Maggie’s friends. Maggie hadn’t even looked at her after it happened.

More than anything, Ava remembered, sitting in the dark of the stuffy closet, her legs bunched up against the wall, breathing into the wall of hanging cloth, knowing that she had nowhere left to go.

 

That memory came back to Ava in a flash, a blink. Gone in an instant, but relived in full. She squeezed them shut tight until she was sure that the moment had gone away; the horror of the recollection made her wish she could squeeze her entire self so tightly that she would blink from existence.

…Was this all going to be a reprisal?

She hadn’t wanted to yell; she hadn’t meant to yell at Odin. He didn’t deserve it. But neither did that girl. And it had all come tumbling down at her regardless. She couldn’t keep her anger controlled, and when she failed, she broke things. She should’ve kept the anger directed at herself, the only person who deserved it, but she would lose her grasp, and as a result, she poisoned the only good around her. She had ruined Maggie, who now thought of her as psychopath, ruined the rest of her schoolmates, ruined it all one by one, falling in row, each time with her coming face to face with a relationship before inevitably and accidentally shattering it. Even now, in a place that was so far removed and unaware of her former life, she continued to break everything presented to her.

Thank God, she thought, thank God she hadn’t hurt him. Thank God she hadn’t hit him and confirmed herself as a psychotic. Thank God his family had not been there, to realize what a lunatic she was, and throw her out where she belonged, not in this nice house.

…But Odin _hadn’t_ thought of her as a lunatic, had he?

He had hugged her. He’d… held on to her, told her it was okay.

Ava swallowed and thought about the way it had felt. It’d been dark and she’d been pressed up so close to his neck and chest, she hadn’t been able to see his face, but she now imagined what it had looked like; his cheek resting against her, occasionally turning his face and lips closer to her, whispering and murmuring things to her whenever her sobs became loud and so big they shook her. His hands had been wrapped around her, but sometimes they loosened their grip and began to rub her back or neck, in sweeping, methodic circles.

She could feel her face going warm as the details linked together, brought together by the scent she had been breathing in from his skin—the musky, almond smell of smoke and pine that had wrapped around her last night, and for some reason was still lingering on her nose. Of course, she realized; he had given her his sweatshirt to wear, and she still had it on. She’d slept through the whole night wrapped in it, making it seem like she was still enveloped in his arms.

Ava rolled over and pushed her face into the fabric of the clothing, desperately trying to cover the profuse blush over her features, and failing miserably, as receding further into the hoodie only made the good scent— _his_ scent—stronger. She felt like chastising herself for her overactive imagination and reaction to the smell, but in the same moment, she badly wanted the source of it, to have him in front of her.

God, what was wrong with her?

She looked up at the canopy fabric and made an agitated humming noise. The details had floated back her, but it still felt like there was smudge between now and then, in the way that her tears had blurred her out of consciousness, and an unknown number of dreamless hours later, she had woken up.

… _Here_. She’d woken up here. In the bed.

They had been on the first floor, right? She hadn’t fallen asleep here, so had…

…Had he _carried her up to the bed?!_

Ava covered her face with her hands and tried to block out the embarrassment and burning sensation building under her cheeks, trying frantically not to visualize it, instead trying to focus on what an absolute dolt and inconvenience she was and how Odin probably thought she was weird to have passed out on top of him. All of her thoughts worked themselves up into a frenzy. Suddenly very aware of the fact that she was in his clothes and laying in a large bed, she bolted to her feet, scurrying the length of the room wringing her hands out and worrying the edge of the sweatshirt as she paced. Ava forced herself to look at what was in front of her in order to calm herself down.

The large windows on either end of the attic room revealed that the rain had coughed itself out to a drizzle, making musical plinking noises as droplets collided and swung down on leaves in the surrounding woodland. As Ava had noticed earlier, the bed had been adorned with extra layers of blankets, of various textures and muted colors, and already she was feeling the chill, the bumps along her skin asking her to get back under the covers.

After a few walks of the room, her heart rate descending, she finally noticed the vanity had been uncovered as her distressed reflection in the mirror caught her eye. The white sheet had disappeared, but had not been replaced on the bed. Odin must have taken it. However, he had left something else: a tall glass of water, and a small note, reading only two words, the phrase “ _Drink me_ ” in heavy letters. Ava picked the paper up, thumbing over the handwriting, before folding it and sliding it into the front pocket of the sweatshirt. With both hands, she shakily lifted the glass and started drinking, the outside slick beneath her fingers with little droplets of frost melting into her skin. After a minute of taking small gulps and peering into the bottom of the glass, she had finished off the water. It made her head feel much better.

As she set it back down on the vanity, she heard the steps to the attic groaning, and she jumped. Someone was coming up the stairs. Odin must have heard her pacing, the old floorboards failing to swallow any of the noise produced by her frantic footsteps, and realized that she had woken up. Ava’s heart beat shot back up again, and in panic, she felt the ability to conjure words vanish. She couldn’t talk to him, not now, not ever. How would they move past last night? How _could_ they? It was too much, and now she had no escape.

In the first instant of disarrayed thought, Ava realized there was nowhere to hide. Shifting her weight, frantically changing her mind on whether to greet Odin or stay put, she finally bolted over to the bed, pulling the curtains partially shut. Clambering beneath the covers, still warm from where she had lain, Ava tried to calm herself, breath lowly, as if still asleep. She was being a child, she knew, trying to avoid him like this. But it was all she could handle. She closed her eyes, resisting the urge to squeeze them, and waited, the gap in the curtain casting a bar of weak light over the bed.

           

 

\---

 

           

As Odin approached the landing in the middle of the stairs, he heard a muffled gasp, quickly accompanied by a patter of feet. He pursed his lips and adjusted his pace ever so slightly. He reached the top, grey light stretching from the outline of the door, and he knocked gently.

“Ava?” He kept his voice mild. His words met no response, and decided, regardless, to enter. He pushed the door open, slowly, as to make sure there would be no cry of protest to him coming in. Odin swung the door open all the way.

There was no one. Ava was not there, he thought, and perhaps he had imagined the noise. He’d gotten to bed as late as she had, and his senses were blurred, sharpened only by the anticipation of his inevitable morning encounter with Ava. That is, whenever she woke up—and at observing the room, it appeared that she had not yet. The bed was motionless.

“A-Ava?” he murmured again. Stillness overpowered the sounds from the outside that fermented in the wood of the house.

Maybe he really had been hearing things. Or maybe, and more likely, she just didn’t want to talk to him. It stung a little, but Odin understood.

Odin rubbed the back of his neck, and turned to leave, but his eye caught on the glass on the vanity, the one he’d left for her filled with water. It was empty.

So she was awake. But… had feigned deafness. Ava _didn’t_ want to talk right now. And besides, she needed the rest; she certainly had a lot of sleep to catch up on. She come downstairs eventually. They’d move on.

Odin stopped himself.

That was the kind of logic that had gotten them—him—here in first place.

_Let it play out without him. Let her come to him—it would all blow over. It wasn’t his place to call her out on it, to interfere, she knew what she needed. He didn’t know her._

He had let that go on since she arrived here. And as much as Odin wanted to believe that she could pull herself out of a hole _alone_ , he couldn’t. Not after last night, not after seeing of how deep that hole went. Him being too proud to push himself towards Ava had gotten her hurt. He’d gotten so angry last night, at himself, and if he walked away now, he’d just be going right back into the cycle.

Odin wasn’t Ava’s hero, but he wasn’t sure if Ava was able to be her own. She just needed a friend.

           

\---

 

Ava’s remained statuesque as she waited for the door to close.

Her body had clenched at hearing him speak, the softness of his voice floating down on her and crushing her chest, weighing heavily in the syllables of her stupid name. But she’d kept her mouth shut. Even if he didn’t think she was asleep, he’d get the message. She wondered if he’d be hurt by it—she didn’t mean for it to be aggressive. But that’s how it probably came off. It was how she had come off last night.

The hanging silence became too loud and Ava squeezed her eyes shut. As she did, the door closed softly, as if answering her discomfort, and she felt the tension rush out of her body.

Until, suddenly, footsteps started towards the bed.

Odin was still in the room.

There was an enormous, fleshy _thud_ in her ears as her heart leaped to her throat and gave out a horrified pounding. There was truly nowhere, now, for her to run to, to escape, save for throwing herself through the glass and out the window, which seemed to her in that a moment a viable alternative. It would be a three-story drop, to parallel the sinking of her gut.

He’d realize what a child she was, trying to avoid him. She was ashamed of herself. Despite being closed, her eyes began to sting, and Ava became even more afraid of confronting him, in the possibility that tears would fall out. She was so sick of crying, so sick of hearing herself moan over nothing. She couldn’t do anything right.

Ava left her eyes open, red-shot and crestfallen, lying there like a raggedy animal. There wasn’t a point in feigning sleep anymore; he must have known she was awake. She deserved whatever he had to think about her.

The sliver of light pushing between the thick, crimson curtains disappeared as Odin’s silhouette appeared behind them, before tendrils of illumination returned, and pooled over the downy contours of blankets as he moved the canopy open with the back of his hand, ever slightly. He peered in and saw her eyes, open and empty, red irises surrounded by thin veins of blood. Their eyes met, an acknowledgement, and after a pause, he made a small motion with his fingers to the end of the bed. Ava shifted her foot beneath the covers, making tiny _shff shff_ noises, and Odin gently sat down, backed against her legs.

“H-hey,” he whispered.

“Hi.” The sound was strangled, grating past lips that Ava had struggled to open.

In spite of this, the corners of his lips cracked upward, but the smile vanished in the next second, scared away. Instead of his face, Ava tried to focus on other things about him. He’d changed from last night, now in a white long-sleeved shirt, with a fine, hatched texture over it. She hadn’t seen him in it before, or seen it in the wash. She wondered if it had the same smell as the sweatshirt she was in, or if had faded, sitting in a closest or chest of drawers.

“How do y-you feel?” It was a genuine question, but she hadn’t a sure answer to give him. Any way she answered would have been equally honest as it would be a lie.

“…I’m okay.”

“Your n-nose alright?”

Ava crinkled it a little, before nodding.

           

\---

 

Odin was reminded of the moment that they had exited the car in the driveway, with him fearing signs of crying on her face, but finding none. She had cried not a minute earlier, but the sadness had been erased from her visage before Olai had seen her. It had impressed him in the moment.

But the difference now was that Ava had cried the entire night before, hours in the past, and yet chemical burns of salt on skin were smeared underneath her eyes, paths of burned redness making a gradient from the corner of her eyes down her cheeks, most severe on her lower eyelids. Odin could not imagine that it did not sting in dryness.

There was a hanging quiet that seemed to make its home in the conversations between him and Ava. Odin looked down at his knees, hands resting on the bed spread on either side of him, and he swallowed.

“Ava,” he started, slowly, as not to jerk her awake with his tone. “I want to ap-apo-ap-apolg-a—“

His tongue felt like it was shriveling to the back of his mouth, and his stomach turned knots at each broken syllable. He hummed his frustration, trying to regain control of his mouth, and glanced at Ava. She peered from beneath the covers patiently, offering a soft blink of the eyes. Odin clenched his teeth quickly, before shifting himself, starting again, rapidly.

“I w-want to say s-s- _sorry_. Th-that I’m sorry,” he uttered, rubbing the back of his neck. He again looked to her, but this time she offered blank bewilderment. He grimaced dryly.

“I… I shouldn’t h-have left you here, I m-mean—“

“You had work,” she interjected, volume turned louder than before. His chest was clenched.

“I kn-know, but, you w-were—you’ve been—dealing w-with a l-lot—I just… Ava, I haven’t m-made an ef-e-effort, or, en- _enough_ of one, to ask... to get to know y-you. I, I br-brought y-you here, and I d-don’t know why I didn’t d-do something sooner—I-I mean, why I didn’t tr-try and help sooner. And I know! I know, th-that… th-that you l-left for _you_ , and not me. B-but your living here with me, and m-my family, and you don’t know us, and it… it’s p-probably just b-been hard. Being by y-yourself, and having to think about all of… th- _this_ alone.”

Oh god, he was rambling. And what a shitty way to refer to what she had gone through, what had happened. His foot was bouncing against the floor. Why had he come up here? What was wrong with him?

She was in silence, in expectation—she was not going to bail him out of this explanation. He inhaled.

“You have to fix things b-by yourself, and you probably don’t want to st-stay here for a long time, I get it, but… maybe I can j-just _be_ here for you, if… in case y-you needed to talk. S-so, would it b-be alright if… if I tr-tried a little more to know you?”

The words stumbled from his mouth, in slopped portions, but he had gotten what he wanted out of his system, at least mostly. But it was quiet. Ava had sat up during his little spiel, and she was squeezing her eyelids. He considered getting up and walking away to give her some space. Her lips parted, ever slightly, shuddery over clenching teeth, letting a lose words that surprised Odin in their shaky anger.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said, words trembling. Her head was lifted up towards the canopy, giving him a chance to look at her face safely, as her gaze was elsewhere. The agitation in her voice was unmistakable, but her averted eyes made him wonder if the anger was for him.

“Do what?”

Ava shifted her little legs beneath the blankets, the small mounds moving from side to side, and he watched as her fingers worried and curled around the edge of a quilt, a faded pastel one his mom had made. She sniffed, and spoke quietly, with little blue cracks breaking up her words.

“You don’t—you don’t have to apologize. You don’t have anything to be… I’m sorry. _I’m_ sorry.”

 

\---

 

Odin furrowed his brow and shook his head. “F-for _what_?”

“For making you feel like this. I’m sorry for yelling at you, and being a child, I don’t know why I did that, I don’t…” She sighed, the words exhausting her. “I’m sorry for lying. I’m sorry for keeping you awake last night. I sorry that you had to carry me up here.”

Odin let out a sudden laugh. “Ava, y-you’re very small, it wasn’t that hard.”

“Just because I’m short doesn’t mean I’m not heavy,” she offered back, cheeks heating up. To this, Odin scoffed.

“You probably weigh n-ninety pounds soaking w-wet, and I would know, because I’ve _also_ carried you when you w- _were_ soaking wet.”

Ava then realized that he probably had to carry her into his car and into the hospital, something she hadn’t even thought about. Her face was probably ten shades of pink right now. She made a little embarrassed noise, and rubbed her cheek, now unsure of how to form sentences.

She wanted to tell him not to waste his time on her. She wanted to tell him that there was nothing worth finding if he went down that path, that whatever good things he could have discovered about her were long gone, that maybe there had never been any good things to begin with. She wanted to say that getting to know her would either leave him meeting a wall of disappointment, or lost in maze of all the shit that was wrong with her. It was probably for the best that she remain some sort of weepy, irate enigma, and move out of his life as oddly and as suddenly as she had moved in.

She also wanted to tell him to grab onto her again, because she felt like crying, and getting a hug felt a lot better than hurting herself.

Ava found herself unable to say any of that, and instead, mumbled again in defeat, “I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t b-be.”

“I’m sorry because I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Ava watched from the corner of her vision as Odin studied her face, before he carefully leaned himself foreword, and rose to full height, the scruff on his jaw catching the light from the windows.

“Well,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “Maybe y-you sh-should sleep on it a little more.”

Odin pulled the canopy curtains closed again, brining sooty darkness back over the bed.

“Sleep tight, firefly.”

Ava listened as the footsteps grew weak, disappearing behind the gasping of door hinges and a cascade of steps until his presence was completely melted away from the room, and the only sound left was the smattered drum of rain on shingles and tree tops. Upon hearing his words, her mind agreed with the sentiment of sleep, sliding her back down under the covers. She pulled the hair away from her neck, and rolled away from the warm spot, splaying herself over a fresh section of the sheets. The redness in her eyes blurred away against the crisp chill of the pillow. The temperature shift anchored fatigue onto her spine and legs, and again, Ava left her conscious behind completely.


	6. Question

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is SO overdue. I'm sorry. There is no excuse.  
> I've been rewriting this for 4 hours now, I'm still not satisfied, but I think that's because this chapter is right before a more major plot point, which is going to be more fun to write.  
> I might go back and edit this because its almost 1 AM where I am, and I might have missed some issues because I am tired.  
> Please enjoy! This one is 13 pages long--the longest one so far. Thank you for all your kind comments and support! You will be hearing from me soon.

The house kept it’s quiet as Ava slept. It had expended all of the energy it could afford in the previous night, and was now still, catching it’s breath. Odin could hear its pulse drop in each creak of the aging wood. He certainly had not the energy to spare to bring the loudness and life back into the house—better to simply wait for its inhabitants to return and restore order. He set in his own quiet as well.

He had huddled himself into his office because the cramped nature of the room was the only closeness the house had to offer at the moment, and he chose to let the artificial feeling bring on more comfort than it should have. The work, and corresponding paper filing, kept his mind away from his sorrowful guest, but brought foreword the unease that came on him from not seeing his sisters, something he recognized bitterly. It had only been a few days since seeing them; if he was like this now, he was ruined for when they left for college. He grimaced, and Odin rent his legs out from underneath his chair, straightening the stiffness and listening to the cracks roll from his knees. As he pushed himself back to position, a distant, muffled crush of leaves sounded from the outside, the unmistakable signal of a car rolling towards the house.

Odin made his way the front door, stuffing his feet haphazardly into his shoes, and opened the portal to the outside, his features catching the wind. The truck was settled in the driveway, and through the windows he watched Olai turn the keys over and kill the engine. The smile grew on his lips with each stride towards the vehicle. The elder brother slid out and slammed his door, casting a look over to Odin, saying nothing.

“Is s-she asleep?” he asked plainly.

Answering his question, Magpie shifted upwards in to view from the passenger side, stretching, and she had no sooner caught his eye before he had opened the door and started to scoop her up. The littlest Arrow hiccupped from the sudden movement but wrapped her arms snuggly around his neck. Odin relished in the soundness that came from holding her, and kissed her several times over before shifting back to look at her.

“Good m-morning, little bird.”

“Hi.”

“How a-are you doing?”

“Mmm.”

“A-Again?”

Magpie stretched her shoulders back and gripped the fabric on his shoulders, putting her head down. Odin pressed a kiss into her dark hair as he strode back to the house, his senses recoiling sharply at the hospital smell that had permeated on her skin and hair, the foreign scent only made more concerning by the wornness layered thinly on her features.

“Did you not sleep w-well at the hospital?” he murmured.

“They gave me medicine ‘fore we left.”

"And they said it m-might make you tired?”

“Mmm.”

“Okay.” Another kiss.

Odin carried her the rest of the way into the house, determining if she was awake enough to safely take a shower without nodding off, and sending her off to do so. As the pipes screeched in succession behind the walls, he shuffled his way back downstairs, not exactly looking for a fight with his brother, but knowing full well that one, or something of one, was waiting for him. The sibling in question was gliding around the kitchen with his face obscured by his length of dark hair. He hadn’t said anything yet, not since he had gotten out of the car. And more truly, he hadn’t said anything since Odin had cursed him out on the phone. He had been deprived of the last word, deprived of the final say, an experience that the elder brother did not take kindly to, which the rarity of the event reflected. Olai was holding out. The elder had had all night and day to sift through his unspoken words and put together retribution, and Odin didn’t like his odds in finishing the conversation on even ground. All wins had always been a predecessor for an inexorable loss.

Odin walked in, and positioned himself opposite of Olai, leaning against the counter as he was. The stage was set. After a second of lull and hard eye contact, Odin set into it.

“Did the r-rest of the tests turn out okay?”

“As far as we know for now.”

“…What the hell d-does that mean?”

“Means it’s fine so far.”

“ _So f-far_?”

“They’ll call if something comes up with the results,” Olai replied brusquely. “They gave us some new medication, which she needs in a few hours.”

He was skirting around the topic, which under any other circumstance Odin would have taken as an indication that things had gone more poorly than expected, and that the details needed to be kept in silence to avoid upsetting the girls—but the twins were gone and Magpie was upstairs. Olai was not childish enough to treat Magpie’s health as something to be lorded over Odin or withheld from him because the two had gotten under each other’s skin—no; _Magpie_ was not subject that Olai was gearing up for. There was clearly another matter that he was waiting for Odin to step on.

Odin glanced down at the floor. Olai stared at him from across the room, his normally silver tongue replaced with iron, waiting for his younger brother to open an opportunity for him to wedge his authority.

Odin said nothing. He did not want to move foreword because he knew now in the back of his mind what subject Olai was headed for.

“Where’s Ava?”

There it was.

Odin cleared his throat. “She’s upstairs.”

“…What—sleeping, still?”

“She’s t-tired.”

“Oh?”

“Y-yeah. I got back late last night, and then w-we were up for a little b-bit afterwards. She’s j-just tired.”

Olai looked him up and down, rolling the response over in his mind for a moment, before pursing his lips and nodding approvingly.

“Well, I’m impressed. I didn’t think you’d have it in you to be able to _wear her out_ quite like that.”

_Fucking asshole._

_"Olai!”_ Odin snarled, ripping through the air between them, “G- _goddamnit_ , that isn’t w-why she’s here!”

But his older brother did not respond with his characteristic and expected jab. Olai leaned against the counter, arms crossed, giving Odin a hard look from across the room. He was silent, picking apart Odin as he stood before him, before finally saying, stiffly,

“Does Ava have any family out here?

Odin was taken aback by the shift in conversational dynamic. “Ah… no, I d-don’t think so.”

“What about in the city?”

“…I d-don’t know.”

“What did she do for work?”

“Olai—“

“Is she in financial trouble?”

"I don’t—“

“So you don’t know any of that? You can’t answer any of those?”

“ _Olai_ —“

 _"Well!”_ he said sharply, “How about something you can answer?”

What had started with a snide comment had evolved with rapid certainty, and as Olai returned his final comment, the room took a pause, the atmosphere spinning from the tension that had swollen into it so quickly. The brothers had their hackles raised from opposite sides of the room, glaring at one another through dust that had momentarily slowed its drift. For a second, Odin became alarmed at the possibility of Magpie, or, God-forbid, Ava, hearing the clamor, but with the water pipes hissing and a few floors between them, the fear subsided.

Odin said nothing, waiting for his brother’s follow up. Olai exhaled sharply through his nose, allowing the caution of proceeding to settle into Odin’s stomach, watching from across the kitchen and streaks of pale light shifting the air. Then, the elder Arrow once more picked up his voice, speaking at a slow, deadly pace, a methodical nature running down the significance of the matter like dripping watercolor, bleeding into the canvas beneath.

“Odin. Are you having sex with Ava?”

“No.”

“Are you in a relationship with her?”

“ _No_.”

“You had no intention of getting with her when you let her into the car, and took her home?”

“No! W-what did I just say?!”

"None, none at all?”

“ _Look_ ,” Odin snapped, ignoring the caution his gut told him to be treading with, “If you d-d-don’t be-believe me—“

“Oh, no! No, I believe you,” he said, cutting Odin’s irritation to a shocked halt. Olai’s mouth was drawn into a scowl as he shook his head. “I didn’t for the first two weeks, but after you called me at the hospital, yeah, that’s when I figured you weren’t trying to nail her.

Odin winced at the crudeness used in part with Ava, but the eldest continued. “But, see, _here’s the problem with that_ , Odin,” he said, voice clipped. He brought his hand foreword in a violent gesture. “If you didn’t fall in love with her, I have no goddamn clue why you brought her here.”

“W-we’ve b-been thought this!”

“No, we really haven’t, Odin. Why did you take her with you?”

Odin exhaled, exasperated, his own arms crossed now, and avoided eye contact with his brother, pursing his lips bitterly. “She want to g-get out of the city, it w-was just a convenient solution for her to be able—“

“No! No, not good enough, Odin!”

“What the fuck do you mean, n-not good enough? That’s the tr-truth!”

“She, and every third fucking person who lives there want to leave that city behind. About a million people could’ve come up to you and given you that same reasoning. What made Ava different?”

“I c-can’t just be compassionate to someone who needs help?!”

"Compassion is one thing, but not even _you_ are stupid enough to bring a complete stranger to live with us on _just_ that half-baked, piss-poor reasoning.”

“That might be the n-nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Odin said dryly.

“Oh, shut up. If you don’t, and didn’t, know anything about her—what she does, who knows her—and you didn’t fall in love with her, or at least her ass, and yet you _still_ invited her home—“

Olai paused, staring at him. “You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?”

He did. He said nothing.

Olai stalked up to him, so close that Odin had to shirk back to avoid his gaze.

“You aren’t telling me everything,” he said, the threat in his words kicking with vicious vitality.

Odin swallowed. “Olai—“

"I’m sure that whatever it is in absolutely mundane; Ava is wonderful to have here, and I couldn’t ask for a more gracious guest. I don’t have a problem with her staying here; I don’t have a problem with her. I take issue only with the fact that you are so clearly hiding something. And again, whatever it is, it’s probably nothing out the ordinary about her. But it isn’t _that_ that pisses me off; it’s the principle that you are comfortable keeping things from me, when they effect all of us.”

“So I’m going to ask again, and you’re gonna answer me. _What made Ava different?_ ”

The space between the two had shrunk dangerously. Truly, Odin considered, again, in that moment, telling him everything that had happened, considered ending his brother’s tirade right there—and again, he stopped himself. Now wasn’t the moment to surrender Ava’s sufferings on the front of easing the unbalance between the two brothers. So instead, he elected to push Olai’s patience just a bit further.

“I-it isn’t my place to tell you, not n-now,” he finally murmured, the words calmly filling the space between them. Olai’s eyes flared incredulously.

“Excuse me?”

Odin brought his eyes direct to his brother’s, a quiet desperation brought to his features. “J-just take it out on me, and n-not her.”

And just like that, he ducked out of the kitchen, his brother shouting his name after him, fuming, like hounds meant to drag him back, in order to answer for himself. Oh, Olai would bring hell down on him for playing keep-away with answers he wanted, but it hadn’t been a lie. It was an answer Odin couldn’t give him.

Not yet, anyway.

 

\---

 

As the days moved forward, Odin kept a closer note on how Ava fit in with the house, as it’s inhabitants moved back towards their normal schedule. Despite the house filling back up in occupancy, there was breathing room between the two of them. More than that, there was understanding, and opportunity—so Odin was okay with it, knowing Ava would come foreword, comfortably, in her own time. Nonetheless, he kept up with her, making sure that in the days following their reunion, Ava showed signs of feeling better, rather than sinking lower. If he could see that, in a simple way, he felt it would be an improvement.

The words he exchanged with his brother continued to be curt and irritated. Crow and Raven continued to heckle Odin on his “temporary house guest” whenever the subject seemed relevant. They weren’t ones to initiate harassment out of nowhere—no, the twins garnered more satisfaction by snaking insults naturally into the fabric of conversation, as if belittlement were a relevant transition from one subject to another. But, thankfully, for now, the two of them kept it tame, and mostly out of earshot of Ava herself. Odin wondered when, or if, their amusement of Ava living with them would ever be sated.

And Ava—Ava _did_ seem to do better in the days that followed. She was getting used to the feeling of the house, the routine, and becoming a part of it all. But in spite of all of that, the rings under her eyes remained, dark and heavy.

 

 

\---

 

 

The way in which the waters rushed down and pulled her skin and burned her eyes scared her, because it came over her with the most stunning and stilling familiarity. She was altogether frozen as the waves moved past her, her limbs and then her body, and finally, her. And at her core she felt a grand white fire of panic and helplessness, as embers of anger shred away from the base of her and flaked down, towards the small silvery feet that swept in circles around her.

 

\---

 

Ava woke with a start.

Her lungs grappled, like a child’s hands, against the air around her, taking in a wispy, butchered breath as her body sought to find oxygen, tell the rest of her that it was there, plenty there. Ava’s eyes flared with heat, and she let out a quiet wail to herself, coughing on her own cries.

She hated this, and more, she hated that she was barely crying out of fear anymore, but of frustration, of how routine this moment of consciousness had become.

It bothered her more than it should have that her sleep had not gotten better, that her nightmares had not left her alone; after all this time, she was bitter with herself that even a small part of her had hoped that, after the furious cataclysm of emotion that she had relinquished just a few nights prior, her sleep would be a little less restless. She was bitter, because she knew better.

Ava swallowed as sweat collected on her back, and listened to the decrescendo of her swells of breath as the tears on her face lost their warmth. She propped herself up, arms locked straight against the mattress, and then let her chin drop against her chest and her hair fall around her view. She sighed. Speckles of rain drizzled against the roof from the outside world.

She considered for a moment going downstairs and sleeping on the couch again, just for the change in scenery but she suddenly killed the thought. For one thing, she was no longer alone in the house, and did not want to call attention to herself or make herself a bigger nuisance than she was surely already considered.

But more truthfully, Ava realized, she didn’t _want_ to sleep downstairs.

She wanted to sleep in _this_ bed.

It was warm, it was soft, and it was beautiful. There wasn’t anything else that could hold a candle to the way the heavy red of the curtains and covering breathed different colors as the light of the day evolved, of the way the moonlight swept up the ridges of the embroidery, so cleanly that Ava could see the rise and fall of each ornate thread. Every night, she got to watch the velvet darkness flush the crimson drapes into gorgeous royalty of the twilight hours’ purple. This had been given to her. She got to sleep on this on. And no matter how many nights passed where Ava felt her disgusting thoughts bleed through her skull while she slept, and seep into the pillows, the bed stayed soft, the bed stayed beautiful.

Ava wanted to sleep in this bed.

 

\---

 

One of the girls was shaking him awake.

It was gentle, one shake, a pause, and then another, and as his instincts as an older brother slowly overpowered the sharp desire to return to sleep, he gauged in the darkness the quiet, determined intensity of the girls attempt to wake him up. It wasn’t an emergency, but his presence was required, certainly. He rubbed his face, and shifted himself up onto elbow, wondering what time it was. Odin began to take a guess at which of his sister’s it might be—probably Magpie, littlest and most prone to night terrors, although occasionally the twins did see the need to fetch him for things. He only felt one presence in the room, though. But occasionally, Raven or Crow would come to get him without the help of the other.

He couldn’t see a thing in the darkness. He finally felt himself wake up enough, and he put a hand out against his sister’s face, a gesture of quick comfort, and he swept his thumb over her cheek. He still didn’t know which one of them it was. Her cheek was damp, and warm, and his first instinct was, again, Magpie, but there was a surprised chirp from her when he had touched her cheek, as if unused to the contact, so maybe it _was_ one of the twins. Regardless, he sat up fully.

“W-What do you need, lovie?” he murmured. With his other hand, he turned on the light next to his bed, and then looked back to see who he was talking to.

It was Ava.

Her eyes were owlish, clearly not having expected his cooing. After a second of profound horror as what he had just said and how he was holding her face registered, Odin babbled a few apologetic syllables and snatched his hand back to his side, shifting swiftly upright and feeling the blood rush to his own face.

“I’m—s-s-sorry—I th-th-thought—“

"No, I know,” she said quickly, shaking her head, flushed. “You didn’t know it was me. It’s, it’s fine.” He couldn’t gauge exactly how pink she was in the warm lamplight. Odin hastily pulled his legs from the covers and set them on the ground, noting that their height disparity had barely been dissolved even as she stood and he sat.

He was entirely unsure of what to say—he didn’t know what had happened and why she had woken him up. What time was it? What was he doing?

…She had been crying.

Ava held her hands close to her chest tightly, and took a deep breath.

“I need to talk.”

 

\---

 

They found themselves on the porch, watching raindrops in the dark.

Despite the hour and weather, it had been the obvious choice for whatever conversation was going to ensure. There was no need to wake up the others, and there wasn’t a guarantee that whatever was to be said would be for all ears. Odin, despite himself, felt a pinch of irritation at having been woken up at an ungodly time, but he considered that perhaps it was a good thing that he was feeling that—that he wasn’t excusing Ava for everything she did. But it wasn’t as if waking him up without reason; Ava had been crying, her face tinged pink from salt-leaden tears even before he had mistaken her for Magpie. And he _had_ encouraged the idea of the two getting to know each other better. He just hadn’t expected it to happen in the middle of the night.

Ava had apologized profusely for waking him up, clearly unsure if this had been a good idea or not, but she now sat quietly, leaned up against the house on the porch bench, with a comfortable gap between them. He legs were brought up against her chest and her arms wrapped around her knees, and she was pointedly staring out into the blackness of the woodlands. He absently noticed she still donned his sweatshirt from the other night. The pair sat there, their forms sunken in fatigue but their minds wildly alert of the other’s presence. Odin wasn’t sure what Ava had needed to get off her chest, or if she even knew what she wanted to talk about, as waking him had been on an impulse.

The air bit at his face—not with the ferocity that it soon would in the winter months, as wood’s cold fangs had yet to set in properly, but enough to make him shift in the heavy layers of his jacket, and sink his hands deeper into the wool-lined pocket. His fingers brushed against his pipe. Normally, Odin wouldn’t smoke right before going to sleep, but glancing at Ava, his nerves got the better of him.

“Is it al-alright if I s-smoke?”

The question brought her back to reality, and she nodded at him. Odin pulled out the pipe, quickly tucking it in his mouth and flicking open the crested top of his lighter, casting a glow of copper light in the grips of violet darkness, sending flickering shadows into life on their faces and the walls around them.

“Why do you smoke that?” she said suddenly.

He furrowed his brow. “W-why do I smoke, or why do I smoke a pi-pipe?”

“Second one.”

Odin pulled the item in question out of his mouth, allowing purple tendrils to escape his lips into the open air. He sighed out the last of the smoke, whilst replying. “M-my dad smoked a pipe.”

“Why did _he_ smoke a pipe? I mean, he couldn’t have been that old for them to be normal,” she asked.

Odin laughed. “No, no, he w-wasn’t, he just hated cigarettes. And his dad, my granddad, probably smoked one, t-too.”

“…Was that one his pipe? Do you have his?”

Odin took pause at that, and she could see he was mentally taken at the chime of old memories that surfaced at her curiosity; something in the family of loneliness flashed across his face.

“Ah… n-no.”

He wasn’t sure where this was all headed. Of all the possibilities he had traced through his brain on what Ava meant about “talking”, he hadn’t considered it being talk about himself. But as far as he could tell, there was no harm in it, and, he thought, communication went both ways; he knew nothing about Ava, but she knew very little about him, either. He let it play out.

 

\---

 

“How long have you smoked?”

He snorted. “W-what are you, my d-doctor?”

Ava realized abruptly that she was prying despite herself. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

Unexpectedly, Odin lifted his arm up and bumped her with his elbow, and a surprise shimmied up her arm from the contact. “It’s f-fine,” he said, smiling in an effortless way from behind his pipe. “Eight years.”

“…And you’re…?”

“I turn tw-twenty-four in November.” Ava wondered if she would still be here, with them.

"Really?”

“Y-you sound surprised.”

“You seem older.”

“In a g-good way or a bad way?”

“In a way that you seem more worn down than you should.”

“Thanks,” he answered sarcastically, but with a smile tingeing the corners of his mouth. She wasn’t exactly wrong in her observation.

“What about Olai?

“Twenty-s-six.”

“Why did your parents wait so long between having you and your brother, and having the girls?” Ava asked, her brow furrowed.

"They had us when they w-were young. My mom was… twenty, I th-think, when Olai was born. ”

“…On purpose?”

Odin chuckled. “Probably n-not.”

           

\---

 

They were comfortable in this little game they were playing, a slow back and forth of questions and answers, perhaps due to the simplicity of the answers, of what was being asked. But Odin knew all this was in anticipation of all the other unanswered calls echoing between them. The simple queries and answers were opening doors to the harder and darker truths that had skirted exposure for so long. And above all else, he knew they weren’t on equal footing; he already knew what was at the core of Ava’s self, a truth that had been horrifically unveiled before Odin knew about the rest of her, what built her and what was holding her up—or, he supposed, what _wasn’t_ holding her. It didn’t matter that Odin, like all people, had his own secrets, because those would be dug out with time. For Ava, it had been sitting in the open between them from the beginning.

           

\---

 

Ava knew this wasn’t enough.

Anxiety was raking up and down her back so badly she could hardly sit still. The dream had progressed. She had gotten beyond the surface of the water, and the feeling of it throwing her limbs around, the sensation of helplessness and suspended immobility persisted even now, and it was killing her. She needed to talk. She needed a distraction, and his smoking habits, this small talk, wasn’t enough. Ava swallowed.

Some things needed to be asked.

 

\---

 

“Can I ask something else?”

“Of course.”

“Does your family… Does Olai—does he ever ask?”

“…Ab-about you?”

“Why I’m here, why you really brought me here.”

Odin cleared his throat, his features changing color as he thought about it, and he prayed it was hidden under the layers of darkness.

“…Well, Crow and Raven do, but that’s because they think…ah, well—“

Unable to help herself, Ava giggled at the flush growing over him, and he chuckled nervously in suite.

“Sorry for that,” she said.

"N-not your fault. And they’re r-realizing you’re t-too good for me for that to e-ever happen.”

“Stop!” she laughed, and he leaned his head back with a grin, pleased with her reaction. Then, he coughed, and continued.

"But, ah, yeah, Olai has asked ab-about you. He… he c-can tell I know more the-then I told him ab-about why I brought you here, but he’s fine. He’s not mad.”

“He’s not mad at you? At me being here so long?”

“Oh, no, he’s pissed as _shit_ at m-me _,_ but _you_ , firefly, he’s got no problems with. You are the p-perfect guest.”

At that, Ava huffed incredulously and gave him a rotten look. “I am not a guest, and you know it. At this point, I qualify as a squatter.”

Odin burst out laughing leaning over himself at Ava’s adamancy. His cackling only ruffled her more, prompting her to shift her body to better face him.

“I’m serious, Odin! I haven’t even been looking for a job! I am parasite to your family!”

“You,” he said, in between laughs, “do _not_ qu-qualify as a parasite doing as much housework and cl-cleaning as you do. Hell, Olai likes y-you more than he does me. If anyone should be worried about g-g-getting thrown out, it’s me.”

Ava hummed in disagreement and leaned back against the house. Odin let his amusement run its course, before looking out at the sky, thinking about the stars flush behind the clouds that lumped overhead. He almost remembered how tired he was. Almost.

“M-my parents would have r-really liked you, too.”

 

\---

 

“How old were you when your pa—“

_Ava, you fucking idiot._

She stopped abruptly, clamping her lips together, keeping the words from escaping. Her eye flitted over to him nervously, to see if the damage had been done, praying that she hadn’t loosed enough of the thoughtless words to make clear what it was she wanted to ask. What was wrong with her? Waking him up at some ungodly time in the night, dragging him out into the cold and rain, and making him answer something like that, to make him talk about something like that? Why would she do this?

_You idiot. You dumbass._

But she could tell, even in the dark, her heart sinking in regret, that Odin knew where she was going. The darkness wasn’t enough to hide the tiny shift that took over his face as he thought about the answer. He looked down at his legs, then the trees from beyond the porch, and cleared his throat quietly.

“Th-they died in a c-c-car accident,” he said. “I was s-sixteen.”

“…So your sisters, they were…”

“F-five and three, yeah.”

Eight years, she realized. He had said eight years—so he started smoking after—

Ava’s stomach lurched. Her eyes welled up. She was going to vomit. This was horrible; this was all her fault, _all her fault—_

Ava did not even feel as her legs swept from under her and shot her to her feet, could hardly feel the shock of cold grain beneath the bare soles of her feet as she stood upright. Her fists were clenched into the front of her sweatshirt— _his_ sweatshirt _—_ and she faced him in a panic.

“I’m so sorry, Odin.”

He looked at her, startled by the suddenness of her movements. She was standing—when did she stand up?

“H-hey—it’s okay—“

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I shouldn’t have asked about that, it’s none of my business, I, I shouldn’t have woken you up, I’m sorry!”

“Y-you’re okay, Ava, really—“

“You don’t have to stay out here, go back to bed.”

“No, Ava—“

“Here, let’s go back inside.”

She whipped around on the balls of feet and lurched to the doorway. But she did not get far. She felt herself catch on something, pulling her to a stop. She looked, and once more warmth took lightning jumps up her skin as she saw him leaned over, hand outstretched and gripped on her elbow, keeping her with him.

“It’s _okay,_ Ava,” he said, slowly and with a warm quietness in his voice. His eyes held steady on hers. “I d-don’t mind talking about it. I don’t mind, r-really. Let’s k-keep talking.”

A bead of sweat trickled down her neck in spite of the cold. She glanced at the door again.

Odin tugged gently, the simple movement damnable in the way it was convincing her.

“C’mon. S-sit.”

She relented.

He slowly let his fingers drift from her arm, so slowly as to nearly make her think he was reluctant to let her go. But that was just her imagination. She settled back down on the bench, closer to him this time. She buried her face into the folds of her arms over her knees, looking over them out into the trees, which continued to offer an alternative to eye contact for the two of them.

He tucked his pipe back into his pocket and stretched his legs out. “I’m s-surprised you didn’t ask about it sooner, actually. I think curiosity w-would have gotten to most p-people at this point.”

Ava didn’t respond. She was on guard now, chaining her tongue for fear of bringing distress on the moment once more.

Violet night continued to cry.

           

\---

 

Odin watched and waited for her to catch her breath, for her to resettle and offer an opportunity to start again. They had gotten close; she came out wanting to talk, and so they did, but the grave subject matter her curiosity had stumbled on had spooked her. So in convincing her to stay, he too was determined to retry harboring a conversation.

They had tried talking about him, he realized. But certainly, _he_ was not what had woken her up, crying. Whatever had been butchering her night hours into ragged sleeplessness, it was not thoughts of him: it came from behind Ava, somewhere he could not see.

So maybe that’s where they could start.

 

\---

 

“Ava.” The crispness of her name, independent of other words, caught her to attention.

“Mm?”

“May I a-ask you something?”

“Yeah.

Odin breathed in, chest rising and falling. “How are y-you sleeping?”

She laughed bitterly to herself, dry smile pressed into her forearm, and she brought her eyes up to his brightly.

“That’s a waste of a question.”

“Why do you s-say that?”

“I woke you up in the middle of the night looking like fresh hell. You already know the answer to that.”

It was his turn to laugh, small and sympathetic. “Maybe. Then, maybe an-another question?”

“Alright.”

“What k-keeps you from sleeping?”

Ava did not laugh this time. She looked down at the weathered grain of the porch, and the bumps rising along her hands and feet as the cold seeped in from the air, reminding her that she had Odin were not separate from the rest of the world when they spoke. It was as if she had forgotten.

“…You already know the answer to that one, too,” she whispered.

He took in her response, watching her from behind a curtain of darkness and an orchestra of a forest as raindrops played the notes of the trees, the roof shingles, the sodden ground, the tops of speckled rocks.

“Tell me what happens,” he said, “when you sleep.”

“…What _didn’t_ happen when I was awake.”

“You k-kill yourself?”

She nearly balked hearing the words out loud, coming from someone else. She was reminded of the night in the hospital, the moment when he had pieced together her intentions. He must of sensed this, as he followed the question quickly.

"I’m s-sorry, that was—that w-was too—”

“No, it’s… well, not always.”

And she listened to herself recount the dream, it’s progression, and she felt herself, too, alongside Odin, grow to attention; he, in concern, and her, in surprise, at the sudden outpouring she heard from herself. After some minutes, of nothing but her own voice pulling the dream from the front of her mind, where is had made it’s sickly residence, she found herself out of words, out of descriptions for the nightly experience, and the respectful silence he had offered in listening was paired with her silence in having run her course of story.

And she found herself light headed, as a leaded body had unwrapped itself from her own. Never had she done something like this before. Ava was too taken aback by the impulse to share herself that she could hardly feel the nerves crackling up her back as she waited for his reply. How does one, she thought, follow up something like that? She glanced at his face as he sifted through the details of the visions.

He was still processing it all, forming a response. She had shared her burden of depraved dreams with him—and after so many minutes of speaking, removing the nightmare from the isolation of her own head, she could no longer wanted to be in silence.

 

“I won’t wake you up again,” she said quietly.

"Ava,” he said with unwavering immediacy, “ _Please_ w-wake me up again.”

Shock hit her stomach.

“What? Why?”

“Be-because you needed to talk.”

“But that could have waited…”

“You c-couldn't sleep, right?”

“…Right, but—”

"And y-you were upset, over the dr-dreams.”

“Yes—”

“And you said you needed to talk.”

She stayed quiet. He cocked his head.

“Well? Do you f-f-feel better now?”

 

…Yes.

She did.

 

          She could only nod numbly, head still reeling. Odin Arrow smiled at her, and very quietly said to her,

          “Then k-keep waking me up, for as long as you need.”

           


End file.
